for C. H.

I knew the afternoon was coming to a close—
and it’s all right that you weren’t there with me—
as I made out a star from my window.
But that was fine. There is no afternoon
that can go on forever, no sky permanently orange,
no plane hang in the air halfway to wherever,
no jet stream and no cloud elude the laws of water,
no smoke rejoin the first flame of the fire,
no tree with no leaf that can fall over and over
through a world where it is always afternoon.
Afternoon—the word itself is easy on the ear
full of a soft f and those, those slowed-up os
that melt away to nothing on the tongue.
We love it because it leaves us, becomes evening.

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Find more on Andrew Jamison’s short collection, The Bus From Belfast, on the Templar Poetry website.

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Andrew Jamison was born in County Down, Northern Ireland, in 1986 and educated at Queen Mary, University of London and the University of St Andrews. His first short collection,The Bus from Belfast, will be published in the U.K. in November 2011.