Glass

Sarah Jane Barnett

She wakes into night madness break up hospitals crossing over

in the next ward, her nightie, the night time tea trolley,

and because she's confused she tells the nurse about a trip to Australia

when she was a young thing, with its roaring sky and nothing between

them but bombing frass moths, and how, for years after he would never be seen

from above—the moon tracing silver along the railway lines—from the air

no less, but the nurse just says there may be a long wait

and swivels the radio to listen to an interview with a glassmaker

in Stourbridge, which is her hometown but that's as clear as a coal smoke,

or that red sky—they left the house at a run so she had to leave behind

the little things: the shape of her hands, her understanding of bread,

and afterward a woman with a cameo on her blouse said she felt her legs

just move. Just move, she said, away from the sound.