Dormouse Summer

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning – how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.
         Byron, Journal 7 December 1813

Missing the small moment of warmth
and possibility: is it the greatest fault?

What I do to maintain myself: a few
habits of solitude and unbundled filth.

Buttoning and unbuttoning, the clothes
make their own time, expandable and fluid.

What is history but a straw in the wind,
a bird making a nest, a toot on a flute.

Existing for its own sake: how many moments
make up this tiny summer as it folds?

I can eat my own weight over again,
I can become a giant in my own field.

Sleep has a call on life: is it the genuine
purpose, to build a darkness where we float?

‘That’s the secret,’ says the dormouse,
‘Falling into the void is the start of flight.’