June
This midnight, I climb into bed
beside my wife, feel the heat of her body.
She shifts, then settles. In the blue dark
I lie under only a sheet,
feel the air soften as I wait
for the tide of sleep to carry me over
the space that exists between this moment
and morning. Tonight we are resting
in that bit of being young between one stage
and the next. The stars are really holes
in the night through which future is leaking.
I listen to the slow bloom of her breathing.
Joe Caldwell is a teacher and writer from Sheffield, UK. His poems have been published in ‘The North’, ‘The Rialto’, ‘Magma’, and various other places.