Perfect Timing
The night I fell in love with you I lost my watch:
stripping off at the sea's edge, it fell into the dark
as I swam out into a night thick with stars,
with fisherman calling from one lit boat to another
of their catches and harbours, leaving for the dawn.
Imagine it now, plunged deep in cool sand, still hidden
years later, grains ticking over it one by one -
as your hands slide into me and I move to their pulse.
Spilt Milk
Two soluble aspirins spore in this glass, their mycelia
fruiting the water, which I twist into milkiness.
The whole world seems to slide into the drain by my window.
It has rained and rained since you left, the streets black
and muscled with water. Out of pain and exhaustion you came
into my mouth, covering my tongue with your good and
bitter milk.
Now I find you have cashed that cheque. I imagine you
slipping the paper under steel and glass. I sit here in a circle
of lamplight, studying women of nine hundred years past.
My hand moves into darkness as I write. The adulterous woman
lost her nose and ears; the man was fined. I drain the glass.
I still want to return to that hotel room by the station
to hear all night the good trains coming and leaving.
The Fall
For some years he still would harden as he
Pushed his fingers through my stubbly hair,
Then gathering my small breasts in his fists
Would bite them, murmuring of glorious fruit
He tasted in Singapore.
At twenty
He's impressed me with his rooms large enough
To run in, with his nonchalance for glass,
With the books he'd hold but never open.
There was the gift of his cool hands along
My shoulder blades, of the olives he'd split
And stone: pressing their charcoal flesh against
My tongue, These taste of you, he whispered, once.
In his absence I'd wait all day in the orchard
Longing for his fruit to fall. Still innocent
And pre-Newtonian I'd lie beneath the Worcester
Pearmain watching the sour fruits soften to rot.
He'd spend entire weekends training his beloved
Nectarines and damsons, cherries, apricots
And pears-the reluctant he'd hard-prune back,
Or whip-graft their rootstocks.
The day I left
I watched him nail his favoured espalier apple,
Arm by arm, against a reddened wall.
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