Unseasonably, Falling

The sun is blind

The old man said

Steps as elusive as wet clay

Milk blue opals in his eyes

Arm outstretched for leverage

In a mantis feeble invocation

The sky a fleck of spit

The road across the cliffs

A muddy chalk

Suitable for marking games

Of war and hopscotch

Casting stones

One knee bent

The trench foundation deep

In a kind of homage

That winter

We did not eat ice-cream

Thought how you wore

A cardigan like rope

Though really it was unseasonably mild

As late spring dancing

One and two and three and four

The pebble skipping

As if this were

A calm still lake

And not another

Stuttered evening’s fall

Still, a hand that reaches out

Measures time

Quite differently to the straightened mouth

Of discomfited laughter

Your cicada heart

You are the silk
Of the daybreak sky


The night’s bruise fading


Summer is skintight 


The ceded shape
See-through and splitting


Watchful with
The shells of yesterday’s eyes


The husk of armoured life
No longer needed


Stretched autumn loose 


You ask, looking up
To see what I see
What is there left in the empty blue?


I feel the breath of wings


We drift far apart


As fast approaching winter afternoons