The rain harangues
Curtails the rags of afternoon
To a kind of twilit comfort
Of these few close held rooms
You are in my sleeve
Sate as other Sunday evenings
Hesitant as a bird
Crumpled as if you were already thrown away
Like the stone the tailor threw
A knit as camouflaging
As any grass-thin shadows
Your voice, close enough
For doves to misconstrue
Still, against the staccato dark
Of shades rigged tight as seabird sails
In any failing storm
I don’t understand
How suddenly you flew
I put my hand out, like a fire
accept
yours is gentle, with that
tremulous shake
of fallen leaves
turning slowly
to the bronze of earth
beyond the dunes
of your shoulder
saw in the unevening sky
the roundness of your disapproval
afternoons as lithe as cats
I imagine
you always have that face
a prosopon, de rigueur
downturned at a scrap of yellow
there are foals in autumn’s colours
the leavened wind
has an insistent touch
as soft and irrevocable as Midas
steam plumes their nostrils and furs their backs
in their gait, unconstrained machineries
take sudden flight
(as you turn, come back inside)
the evening spills her horses
There in the seance
of pewter dark
and falling afternoon
I ran from the rain child’s father
snail shells eye empty
seismic, abrading, polished sutures grey
skulls in catacombs
tumbling, unmade
with that peculiar, watchful nonchalance
of sacrifice gone too far into neglect
the gods respond
with neither grace nor storms
but the dinosaur fragments
of fossil nacre, edges inviting
pressure against, the too soft mollusc
silent, salt and piercing
pedestal like a kiss
lightning fragile (immediacy erased)
in the afterimage inverse
of the slowly leeching beachcomber’s
lope long passing steps