When I lie in bed at 5:45 AM

Anna is getting ready to leave for work

down in the yard,

and a slight shine from the car's backlights

bounces off the snow

and makes visible the bedroom's ceiling in a reddish hue,

until the walls flare up in the headlights' ever-presence

as she backs out of the garage,

steps out briefly

with the driver's door ajar,

pulls the garage door down with a quick, rattling noise,

and clicks the heavy padlock shut

with a loud, clinging determination in the cold,

while the car radio war reports spill out onto the farmyard,

until the door is shut

& the reporter's voice becomes muffled and unintelligible

and the light changes character & intensity

as she backs up against the carriage slide,

puts the car in a low forward gear

and turns the Japanese four-wheel drive away

from the garage, down the birch alley

toward the country road,

while the engine and the disquieted light

around the bedroom upstairs

concludes its morning ballet,

short & itchy though it may have been,

as the winter tyres make a loud crackling noise

in the brittle snow cover, almost like fire crackers

down by the house, and disappear;

the room falling back in its dark silence,

albeit having gained a peculiar,

deaf, symbolic, unregisterable noise in the process,

me switching on my bedside reading lamp,

reaching for the pen, penning this,

though seeing no real reason

to prolong this early state of alert any longer than this!