I could never love a woman
who does not write poems
It may not be the way
things are said these days,
but I am a man out of time.
I need the blood
that flows through them
for I am weary of bloodless women.

I have aged 100 years since
the dead of this last winter
My skin is paper.
My nerves are bare
and my eyes will soon be chalk
So read me from your heart -
read me with your soft blue eyes.
Let me dream of the wine of my plunder

I could understand a woman
who’d turn her back on poems -
but for love, not
to define herself by –isms
and politicise her  –asms…
I need a woman who is the author
of her own life, not the client
of what others would have her think herself to be.

Come lover, we’ll go walking -
hand me down my boots and shoes
I’ll hobble on my
numb and stumbling stumps
for one last ramble through the sands.
See the trees?
Their hands beseech, from the hill,
your voice to rise in poem one last time.