QUOTIDIAN

Dawn

Dissolves

Into dew

Resolves

Into day

But soon

The noon

Is gone

Burnt down

To a husk

Of dusk

Tonight

Tomorrow

Creeps

In

And tomorrow

And tomorrow

Round

And around

Circle the crows

And the shadows

Over the wheat field

And who knows

Where the time goes

Only that it does

Somehow because

Time knows

That it must

Return to dust

(1998)

We’d been to the funeral of my Aunt Laura and it started me thinking about how the uncertainties of life and death all take place within the predictable mystery of time.

‘Wheat Field with Crows’ was apparently Van Gogh’s last painting and, even before I knew that, I’d found it a profoundly haunting image.