THE SUN HOTEL, DEDHAM, 1992

A single bell
tells the hours
of their passing.

I wake on
the hour in
the canopied bed

we share, the
bed that floated
my dreams forty

years before in
the same bay-
windowed, steep-floored

room I crossed
as a child
drawn by careening

bells one morning,
sunlight muzzled in
mist and the

ancient centuries abroad
in the street.
Now, as then,

the continuum prevails;
history persists, sidereal,
not linear. Here

are no ghosts,
no hauntings: this
world is circular.

Rain drifts in
a long wind
up the Stour.

Grey morning light
sketches the summer
mist of forty

years ago. An
abundance of being
and doing trails

me; now dust
silts up my
going. But I

rise & cross
the floor again,
stoop at the

mullioned window, watch
the silent church
hunkered in the

rain. No bells
in concert, just
the timebound tenor

on the hour
and the ticking
of the rain.