Hiding

It’s too early in the morning for thoughts
of clocks, or where I should be at this dim
hour; busy dozing under the big bloodshot
moon with a quilt of stars to ease my chill.
My pulsing breath escapes me gratefully,
hides my head in a haze of slow vapour.
I’m disguised outside, pretending to be
something else: a tree, or stone on the floor.
The earth I huddle on will revolve soon,
turn itself to the light and start again.
Shortly the day will begin with kitchen
sounds and cars and high voices, lights switched on.
I’m not ready to join them, clustering;
I’ll wait here a while longer, lingering.

**

I chose mostly half rhymes, because I wanted to emphasis the understated tone of the poem – I wanted to write something colourless, using only black and white. I think the sonnet is mostly about not wanting to participate in modern life and ways to achieve that.
I used iambic pentameter to show the routine of norm al life, kitchens and clocks etc. but the lines do stray from that when the poem mentions the moon, the ultimate clock for the natural world into which the voice hides.
The lines run over into each other because the poem is about a morning unfolding, the earth revolving and time moving on – I found that by not ending a line at the usual ‘end of the line’, it helped to create that feeling of movement.