Here the bookends
where it came true today,
from first poem to last,
when I glanced to my left
and you were there.

You in the dark corner
lighting matches;
askance, I
see them.

It is not so hard, you say, to shift.
Never before a banker.
Or difficult, I reply, to weigh and find wanting.
Never before an accountant.
Hug, good life (I am lying), good life (you are lying, also);
threnody: ah this we recognise.

Let’s find safe harbour to crown you
once and future love;
let’s escape like sovereigns, like
lost coins to the shady corners,
queen of my heart,
my soul.

May I love you around the edges
like coals buried deep seen only at
like crisp dawn glowing ribbon-red when
like noontide hasn’t yet washed in to
like soft words erode the
like I do.

Gardens growing – spring –
all things pixie dancing wild
and stripping bark to naked fillament:
things about to blossom.

Your eyelids in early morning opening
to dawn-cast sepia, every flower a dandelion,
each waterfront a lemon:
things soon fallen.

Oh love, the frenzy, the twist, flesh
disappearing upward, spiralling,
smeared under our eyes like painted tears:
things on fire.

Of course in our young wisdom cinders
for oars was no obstacle to forward motion
till morning met the mast broiling upward
and life became a diet of limes
or swimming back to shore.

Each convinced best is best (argue
the point like soft bullets flying like this town
isn’t big enough for us both but is built
from us both like we’re crossing scripted
choreographies in preordained strokes), each
committed to the fork.

Milestones passed ah I forget how many
but fading imagination meets at a point
where Lot’s wife savoured infinity likewise
as tenuous footsteps became troublesome:
I will not run on. Soft shoe.
Your bones underfoot.

This wooden face isn’t quite honest,
mouth tipped to a badboy grin,
eyes bunched like wheat in a field-corner;
but these well-painted expressions
convince passersby.