I
Why do I keep looking at you?
Today another photograph
pinned me to my notice board.
You, darling, dearest girl,
a woman so finely formed
by motherhood, I ache
to think I have lain beside you.
Nobody has your smile,
the sweep of your face
beneath hair that has become
my rest, my home.
II
I daren’t write about your voice
but I will, as it holds me to you down this phone.
I feel its formants rest on my shoulder
(like your hand)
and so compassed about with phrases
I am gathered to you in a shower of syllables.
So when you say I don’t want this to end
our talk together my body breaches
dolphin-like from a cold sea – in joy.
III
I realise in imagined talk with you
it is as though we are close in bed,
so close hardly a whisper’s spent,
barely a breath’s taken.
This is how it is when I walk alone
in the night-time park,
and then today in the shopping mall
I forced myself to enter, a short-cut
I said, but knew I’d regret the route.
How could I talk here to my love
when I have known you
under islands’ skies and soft air
kissing deeply at every gate
our hands unclaspable
steering our passion’s cargo
to home and harbour.