[The sash rattles up]

The sash rattles up

then catches.

I clamber clumsily

into the slow

black treacle of the night air

and see the simplicity

moonlight

brings to an autumn frost.

1am, and Woodlands court

is the same as it always is:

at once a place to be

and a place to be absent from,

at once somewhere that is home

and somewhere that is utterly devoid of remembrance.

It’s everything you’d expect

of a Cambridge courtyard:

the library, the chapel,

the fluster of lights

in windows of work-stale rooms.

Stepping out,

the crisp, exhilarating

assault

of night-time on my radiator-warmed skin

And the crunch of the season underfoot

And the smell of the raw earth

like a jolt

in the clockwork

of memory.

Not here, but elsewhere,

the places were

myself:

different ages, different

moods, different company,

but me nonetheless.

Here, the courtyard is blank.

Still just a courtyard.

Still just me and Woodlands court,

separate beneath the stars,

at 1am.