It's unseasonably warm
for a January morning.

I was dreaming of a girl
and blue western skies

...a faded bedsheet
sideways in the breeze
on an old clothes line.

I was dreaming
she was mine.

I don't know the word
for this restless almost breathless
feeling  in my chest -

the opposite of a bluebird
- a ******* crow, at best

a last call cawing
or is it a raven's kraa-kraa

this feeling -
like a shadow in clothes
- a fly in the eye of those

who pray for repose
of my soul.