This is not the poem I wrote while sleeping
Where you wore a mask of summer’s wind bent trees
Of indecision crookèd on your face
Mouthing words no-one hears or reads
A dew from the parasol of your lips
As if the season were uncertain
The sky quite sunless (neither low nor high)
Irregardless of my hand by hand ascension
A lady’s plaits are worn rope
Anchored, twined
Lashed about
Through the day’s fraught folly
All departed ships of laughter
Behind the mollusc of your hand
Far from eider seas
Pillars deliberately leaning
The skull white dome caved in
Never once and never to return
Unwind thread by thread
See how they arc and sleek
As a storm field’s horses
Oil to calm and myrrh to laud
Fine scissors with those scaled
Bird-limbed handles
The stalk beak wading
Through frayed ends
Turning with an alchemist’s consideration
A gull lorn, restless cry
Flax to falling silver
