Counting Stars Poem by Brian Wake

In the early hours then, sometime between
not wanting to get up and needing to,
expectant silences, the visual discrepancy
between gunmetal blues of fading night
and gorgeous morning, my father walked
the landing half asleep.

He asked me if… do I, he said, still work,
and should I shave, and if the bus was due.
I turned him back and closed his bedroom
door, wondering if, at some god-help-me time,
I too would walk the landing half asleep
and if my children might be near
to keep me from unutterable despair.

Against conditions such as these, to question
how and why we live and breathe is somehow
quite absurd. That night, a little time ago,
we went outside and gazed at stars.
My father counting them, my children asking
what they mean and me caught somewhere
in between what matters everyday and what
is meaningless.