Ten Minutes of Weather Away

by Leonie Charlton

In your writing shed an off-white wooden sill
dimpled with fly shit and burnt matches
balances a window pane, a jar, an eagle

feather as wide as your fist
that a man from twenty-four years ago
gave you just the other day

early sunshine takes all that in

through spiders’ webs which
seem crystalline with time, yet
if you brush them with the back of your hand they’ll disappear

you know that because you did it just the other day
on that other wooden sill, in that bothy (ten minutes of weather away from here)
and they resolved to nothing, absolutely nothing

around a cassette tape -
Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin
that hadn’t been played in decades.

This morning, out beyond the feather and fly-shit
you see something akin to cloud-shadow
move across Ben Cruachan, graceful as a Goldie

and you have the human-most luxury
of wondering
how time might dissolve on the tongue.