There’s a line in a Smiths song about “spending warm summer days indoors…” That was what I did yesterday, but I wasn’t writing frightening verse to anyone in Luxembourg.

The calm of a nap, feeling heartbeats shift slowly into synch like moons in orbit of the same hazy warm green planet. Feeling the sun go down, hearing the voices of the neighbourhood kids and dogs and something that sounds like a monkey, all the counterpoint to our breathing.

The darkness spread out like paint, suddenly spilled just before I wake. Calm and warm together, and not worrying about the dishes left in the sink. Quietly thinking, listening to the soft breathing and knowing she will wake sooner or later. Relaxing into the floor, thinking about nothing much at all. Hearing shanti, shanti in the back of my mind.

The calm even in waking. The centuries of depth in the brown of those eyes. Shanti, shanti. Even now.

Sometimes poems are unnecessary, unable, unwritten, unwritable. Sometimes it’s just life happening, on a warm Sunday afternoon.