When a day cools, rhythms
slip through waters’
footsteps. Padded feet improvise
a hidden vein. And you learn all at once

the way windows are too loud.
That a light switch is no different to a broken air conditioner.

It is late. White birds in the distance
are crooning the ruins. The evening
is reddening by the river.
And now it won’t be today
that arrives with the changes.
A slow reverberation tides away.
Other worlds are happening now.
sipping ice from the melted hour
between their teeth pretending
to be familiar with a city on
social media, or a blue flame full of memory.

On the other side a continent
sleeps as though it were at war. Now, there
are only the seeds of a few forgotten syllables.
A sniper’s thoughts in a dull heat.
Nothing will happen now until tomorrow.
When a day cools one knows
and is certain.

Jonathan Jones is a freelance writer currently living and working in Rome. He qualified in 1999 with his M.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University College and in 2004 with an MRes in Humanities from Keele University. He now teaches writing composition at John Cabot University in Rome. He has had several pieces of work published in The New Writer, Poetry Monthly, Iota, East Jasmine Review, The Dr T.J.Eckleburg Review, Negative Capability Press and Dream Catcher.