Cold Days

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did."
--Raymond Carver, Late Fragment

I spent almost all of last night working out what to write about some poetry I've made over the past few weeks, listening alternately to free jazz and the distant fireworks outside. I had forgotten it was Bonfire Night; I don't leave the house that much in the evenings now - away from my family, there was nothing really to celebrate. When conditions were right, we sometimes went to my aunt and uncle's farm in the New Forest, and stoked an enormous fire in one of the empty fields, occasionally cooking foil-wrapped potatoes or marshmallows on sticks in the flames. The night before, I had been out to see Acid Mothers Temple at Taylor John's House in the Coventry Canal Basin; passing the student union, I was surprised to see so many out for the election night. Not having a television, after getting home at 2 o'clock, I didn't stay awake to wait for the votes to come in. The next day, listening to the Brotherhood of Breath, I occasionally reflected how strange, how laughably, absurdly brilliant, it was to have an African-American as the soon-to-be most powerful man on earth, and that such an event should fall on the anniversary of the attempt to destroy a government. No fresh starts, but a breath at last.