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.