PINTER S PAUSE Poem by Adam Wyeth

It was the height of summer.
We sat in the garden reading a play.
I played him and you played her.
Before long you said, ‘Do you know about
Pinter's pause? - those silent moments -
pregnant with words unsaid ...'

I wasn't really listening, I thought I saw
a fox in the undergrowth—
stopping by the hedge to eye up his purple gloves.
Everything was in flower.
We read the play right the way through.
I was him, she was you.

Looking up during each pause—
I imagined him creeping beyond our garden
wriggling under the gap in the fence
behind the clematis and convolvulus—
or whatever it was? The twist of hedgerow,
the turn in the lane, the height of the day.

Just then, everything stopped,
caught between the hands of a clock.
The sun was at its zenith;
I thought if I put my hand out,
I could catch it and put it in my pocket.
I didn't want to say anything, to break the spell.

Then it moved on—like a great cog
in a grandfather clock. The season was passing,
our lives were turning before its eyes.
Those soft paws padding the undergrowth,
gingerly treading between the hedgerows—
beyond the clematis and convolvulus