An excerpt from
What Dante did with Loss
by Jan Conn
Woken at Night by Rain Falling
For Andy Brower and Jackie Brown
I slide open my wall-to-wall window
and the hunched shadow of a wood-rat goes by
as though on tiptoe
and something of that shape
or a memory of that shape
enters my dreams
so later I am in a dark labyrinth,
tunnelling for my life
when a storm
bursts across the fields and the small lake,
waking me and drawing me back to the window,
to the night rain
drenching the bent-over lombardy poplars,
the immense ageless oaks, Lebanese cedars, yews,
the intensely red poppies growing wild
at the boundaries of the wheat fields, the grebes
and chiffchaffs, moorhens and mallards,
I want to climb out the window and dance in the field,
I want to stop caring about why I am here,
who I really am, what it is that's missing
or has always been missing.