Whatever.

HYPOTHESIS

Let this be home: the house we never had,

a box of lights, a jar of copper nails,

cat's bones and feathers

an arm's length into the chimney.

Deep in the garden

the edges wander and blur

convolvulus winds through the flowers, the violets drift

spotting the ditches with colour beyond the canal.

Some nights, the fox slips by

in blood-orange light,

leaving his kill; the wet pelt the frost-threaded eyes,

the bones in the ceanothus, becoming dust,

and waking will sometimes resemble

the sudden precision of gunshots out in the field,

when the woods are immersed 

in a clear and improbable dawn.

and traces everywhere of what is risen;

bonemeal and horsehair, a fingerprint etched in the 

   dust,

whatever it is that fades when we enter a room,

leaves only the glitter of brass, and the gloved noise of

   water.

John Burnside