Howard Firkin
Without your silver iteration birds
provide my morning: waves of song are light
to light my bed with memory of words
I once heard whispered to me in the night.
Without your touch, your memory is all.
Without your perfume, toast and coffee fill
my kitchen with their scratchy linen folds,
the radio’s a waiter: here’s the bill;
a memory of hands another holds.
Without you, morning doesn’t break; it falls.

My days are torch lit nights. I live in rooms
I recognise from brochures or suppose
I might if cognitive ingress resumes.
Without your knowledge, no one really knows.