Title: Wake

In: Sport 39: 2011

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2013, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 39: 2011

Wake

page 117

Wake

This is the chapter where we learn what distance is.
Come in Come in, our eardrums hymn to the television
news. We all want to carry our share of bricks.
The child tosses and turns in the lowest bedroom.

Pictures of trucks and buildings on the sheets
tangle up at the child’s feet.
Out, out,
he calls out in his sleep.

Doesn’t the world seem solid?
The glass pane ripples like a lake.
We see ourselves in the glitter and scatter.
Doesn’t the end of summer feel like a mistake.

The child’s eyelids are as big as hills.
We feel him kick out in his sleep.
A man wrapped in a white blanket
walks the broken street.

This is the chapter of the held breath.
We step out, praying that nothing will fall
except for leaves and hail.
His blanket catches the wind, like a sail.