Poem: Sun rise

I can tell you when I last fed
my ever-begging belly;
How many hours of sleep I
foraged in the wee hours;
How many decades I've notched
into the headboard of time;
That the years have lapped me
like cars on a tyre-worn circuit
since I last crashed into love.

But I don't remember, couldn't
say when I stopped writing
letters; or held onto a joke long
enough just to tell it; flew a kite,
rode a bike, made mansions of
chairs and blankets; or watched
the sun cleave from the horizon.

My voice - my real voice, the one
with nightingale ambitions - creaks
with disuse. I have chased the
tumbleweeds of language into a
desert with no light. But I am still
here, hidden in the dark. All I need
is a hum and a whisper, a suggestion
of dawn, to sing into the sun's rising.