By Nell Regan

The rooks that rise above the serried ranks
of homes augur unease as though
soil itself has not settled, knows not
what memory knows (or what the body
recalls and expects) except come spring:
when a nudge of weed and wild flower
show through, a ghosted version from below.

At each roundabout cars swing out
in pre-dawn dark, a moving arc
of light about the city, while the pointed
breast of the mountain waits,
bare against its loose covering of night.