He educated her on John Coltrane,
on Heron-Scott, and Black Power movements.
Old jazz romantics and second-hand
hipster records; two white kids
indulging in slavery guilt
and the throb of aching trumpets.

They kissed to the taste of cheap red,
her lipstick fogging on his mouth, clouding his
mind with south-western coastlines
and the promise of an easy tomorrow.
Incense burned and curtains twitched
as they agitated the silence
of New Suburbia.

She told him stories about the moon,
how a million collisions made sense out of entropy,
and how a million letters could be sent,
but still words can never be enough.
They dined on a park bench overlooking
the arcade; shadows of yesterday's Britain,
a simple summer for older generations.

Their own summer had passed
in a shrug of shoulders, families staying in to watch
the latest action film.
They reclaimed the autumn
as a time for new living, as a time-lapse
to remember, as a half-formed memory,
given to **** and old melodies.

The sheep pastured on a steep distant hill,
rolling green and cigarette papers turning like
leaves of a book in the coastal wind.
She drew a breath, dissipated cloud;
he held his own, held her close,
and like a blind man, he read meaning
through the undulations in her spine.