Echo

Echo A web waves in the warm breeze, caught between ancient wooden struts, indefensible, beneath an empty seat. It splays to breaking point; fine-knit, like a fibre-glass veil; delicate strength resisting air. Behind, purple bell-shaped blooms bow their heads in unison, deferring to the weight of a sprinkler’s misty jet, that fans out in the shape of victory. But it is not these shimmering droplets that crystallise quietness; nor the opaque haze, as heat warps the scene into film; it is not even the web, hanging on, precarious, like angel-hair, suspended, where even one breath might fracture the whole. My quiet distils to single drips echoing inside a hollow barrel, like an insistent broken tap in a sleeping house at midnight, incessantly filling night’s spaces until dawn arrives again.