anointed, given – what we would wish ourselves.

  2005

  River

  Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me

  to walk from the journeying years of my time and arrive.

  I part the leaves and they toss me a blessing of rain.

  The river stirs and turns, consoling and fondling itself

  with watery hands, its clear limbs parting and closing.

  Grey as a secret, the heron bows its head on the bank.

  I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which ache

  as though they held up this heavy sky, or had pressed

  against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars;

  open my mouth, wordless at last meeting love at last, dry

  from travelling so long, shy of a prayer. You step from the shade,

  and I feel love come to my arms and cover my mouth, feel

  my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird

  threading a river. Then I can look love full in the face, see

  who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my life.

  2005

  Absence

  Then the birds stitching the dawn with their song

  have patterned your name.

  Then the green bowl of the garden filling with light

  is your gaze.

  Then the lawn lengthening and warming itself

  is your skin.

  Then a cloud disclosing itself overhead

  is your opening hand.

  Then the first seven bells from the church

  pine on the air.

  Then the sun’s soft bite on my face

  is your mouth.

  Then a bee in a rose is your fingertip

  touching me here.

  Then the trees bending and meshing their leaves

  are what we would do.

  Then my steps to the river are text to a prayer

  printing the ground.

  Then the river searching its bank for your shape

  is desire.

  Then a fish nuzzling the water’s throat

  has a lover’s ease.

  Then a shawl of sunlight dropped in the grass

  is a garment discarded.

  Then a sudden scatter of summer rain

  is your tongue.

  Then a butterfly paused on a trembling leaf

  is your breath.

  Then the gauzy mist relaxed on the ground

  is your pose.

  Then the fruit from the cherry tree falling on grass

  is your kiss, your kiss.

  Then the day’s hours are theatres of air

  where I watch you entranced.

  Then the sun’s light going down from the sky

  is the length of your back.

  Then the evening bells over the rooftops

  are lovers’ vows.

  Then the river staring up, lovesick for the moon,

  is my long night.

  Then the stars between us are love

  urging its light.

  2005

  The Lovers

  Pity the lovers,

  who climb to the high room,

  where the bed,

  and the gentle lamps wait,

  and disembark from their lives.

  The deep waves of the night

  lap at the window.

  Time slips away

  like land from a ship.

  The moon, their own death,

  follows them, cold,

  cold in their blankets.

  Pity the lovers, homeless,

  with no country to sail to.

  2005

  New Year

  I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl

  and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves

  against the night, flowers of desire, love’s fervency.

  Out of the space around me, standing here, I shape

  your absent body against mine. You touch me as the giving air.

  Most far, most near, your arms are darkness, holding me,

  so I lean back, lip-read the heavens talking on in light,

  syllabic stars. I see, at last, they pray at us. Your breath

  is midnight’s, living, on my skin, across the miles between us,

  fields and motorways and towns, the million lit-up little homes.

  This love we have, grief in reverse, full rhyme, wrong place,

  wrong time, sweet work for hands, the heart’s vocation, flares

  to guide the new year in, the days and nights far out upon the sky’s

  dark sea. Your mouth is snow now on my lips, cool, intimate, first kiss,

  a vow. Time falls and falls through endless space, to when we are.

  2005

  Whatever

  I’ll take your hand, the left,

  and ask that it still have life

  to hold my hand, the right,

  as I walk alone where we walked,

  or to lie all night on my breast,

  at rest, or to stop all talk with a finger

  pressed to my lips.

  I’ll take your lips,

  ask, when I close my eyes, as though

  in prayer, that they ripen out of the air

  to be there again on mine,

  or to say my name, or to smile, or to kiss

  the sleep from my eyes. I’ll take

  your eyes,

  nothing like, lovelier under, the sun,

  and ask that they wake to see, to look

  at me, even to cry, so long as I feel their tears

  on your face, warm rain on a rose.

  Your face I’ll take, asleep, ask that I learn,

  by heart, the tilt of your nose; or awake, and ask

  that I touch with my tongue the soft buds of the lobes

  of your ears

  and I’ll take them, too,

  ask that they feel my breath shape

  into living words, that they hear.

  I’ll take your breath

  and ask that it comes and goes, comes and goes, forever,

  like the blush under your cheek, and I’ll even settle for that. Whatever.

  2005

  Betrothal

  I will be yours, be yours.

  I’ll walk on the moors

  with my spade.

  Make me your bride.

  I will be brave, be brave.

  I’ll dig my own grave

  and lie down.

  Make me your own.

  I will be good, be good.

  I’ll sleep in my blankets of mud

  till you kneel above.

  Make me your love.

  I’ll stay forever, forever.

  I’ll wade in the river,

  wearing my gown of stone.

  Make me the one.

  I will obey, obey.

  I’ll float far away,

  gargling my vows.

  Make me your spouse.

  I will say yes, say yes.

  I’ll sprawl in my dress

  on my watery bed.

  Make me be wed.

  I’ll wear your ring, your ring.

  I’ll dance and I’ll sing

  in the flames.

  Make me your name.

  I’ll feel desire, desire.

  I’ll bloom in the fire.

  I’ll blush like a baby.

  Make me your lady.

  I’ll say I do, I do.

  I’ll be ash in a jar, for you

  to scatter my life.

  Make me your wife.

  2005

  Art

  Only art now – our bodies, brushstroke, pigment, motif;

  our story, figment, suspension of disbelief;

  the thrum of our blood, percussion;

  chords, minor, for the music of our grief.

  Art, the chiselled, chilling marble of our kiss;

  locked into soundless stone, our promises,

  or fizzled into poems; page print

  for the dried flowers of our voice.

  No choice for love but art’s long illness, death,

  huge theatres for the echoes that we left,

  applause, then utter dark;

  grand opera for the passion of our breath;

  and the Oscar-winning movie in your heart;

  and where my soul sang, croaking art.

  2005

  Echo

  I think I was searching for treasures or stones

  in the clearest of pools

  when your face . . .

  when your face,

  like the moon in a well

  where I might wish . . .

  might well wish

  for the iced fire of your kiss;

  only on water my lips, where your face . . .

  where your face was reflected, lovely,

  not really there when I turned

  to look behind at the emptying air . . .

  the emptying air.

  2011

  The Female Husband

  Having been, in my youth, a pirate

  with cutlass and parrot, a gobful of bad words

  yelled at the salty air to curse a cur to the end

  of a plank; having jumped ship

  in a moonstruck port,

  opened an evil bar – a silver coin for a full flask,

  a gold coin for don’t ask – and boozed and bragged

  with losers and hags for a year; having disappeared,

  a new lingo’s herby zest on my tongue,

  to head South on a mule, where a bandit man

  took gringo me to the heart of his gang; having robbed

  the bank, the coach, the train, the saloon, outdrawn

  the sheriff, the deputy sheriff, the deputy’s deputy, caught

  the knife of an enemy chief in my teeth; having crept away

  from the camp fire, clipped upstream for a night

  and a day on a stolen horse,

  till I reached the tip

  of the century and the lip of the next – it was nix to me

  to start again with a new name, a stranger to fame.

  Which was how I came to this small farm,

  my new wife

  on my arm, tattooed on my wrist,

  where we have cows and sheep and hens and geese

  and keep good bees.

  2011

  Rings

  I might have raised your hand to the sky

  to give you the ring surrounding the moon

  or looked to twin the rings of your eyes

  with mine

  or added a ring to the rings of a tree

  by forming a handheld circle with you, thee,

  or walked with you

  where a ring of church-bells

  looped the fields,

  or kissed a lipstick ring on your cheek,

  a pressed flower,

  or met with you

  in the ring of an hour,

  and another hour . . .

  I might

  have opened your palm to the weather, turned, turned,

  till your fingers were ringed in rain

  or held you close,

  they were playing our song,

  in the ring of a slow dance

  or carved our names

  in the rough ring of a heart

  or heard the ring of an owl’s hoot

  as we headed home in the dark

  or the ring, first thing,

  of chorusing birds

  waking the house

  or given the ring of a boat, rowing the lake,

  or the ring of swans, monogamous, two,

  or the watery rings made by the fish

  as they leaped and splashed

  or the ring of the sun’s reflection there . . .

  I might have tied

  a blade of grass,

  a green ring for your finger,

  or told you the ring of a sonnet by heart

  or brought you a lichen ring,

  found on a warm wall,

  or given a ring of ice in winter

  or in the snow

  sung with you the five gold rings of a carol

  or stolen a ring of your hair

  or whispered the word in your ear

  that brought us here,

  where nothing and no one is wrong,

  and therefore I give you this ring.

  2011

  Spell

  Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds

  that keeps things living in a written line,

  whatever’s lost or leaving – lock of rhyme –

  and so I write and write and write your name.

  2011

  New Vows

  From this day forth to unhold,

  to see the nothing in ringed gold,

  uncare for you when you are old.

  New vows you make me swear to keep –

  not ever wake with you, or sleep,

  or your body, with mine, worship;

  this empty hand slipped from your glove,

  these lips sip never from our loving cup,

  I may not cherish, kiss; unhave, unlove . . .

  And all my worldly goods to unendow . . .

  And who here present upon whom I call . . .

  2011

  Drone

  An upward rush on stairs of air

  to the bliss of nowhere, higher,

  a living jewel, warm amber, her,

  to be the one who would die there.

  2011

  Chaucer’s Valentine

  The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne . . .

  but be my valentine

  and I’ll one candle burn,

  love’s light a fluent tongue,

  old habit young, the door ajar

  to where our bed awaits,

  not in a room

  but in a wood, all thrilled with birds,

  the flight of early English words to verse,

  there as sweetness evermore now is,

  this human kiss,

  love’s written bliss in every age . . .

  hold the front page.

  2014

  An Unseen

  I watched love leave, turn, wave, want not to go,

  depart, return;

  late spring, a warm slow blue of air, old-new.

  Love was here; not; missing, love was there;

  each look, first, last.

  Down the quiet road, away, away, towards

  the dying time,

  love went, brave soldier, the song dwindling;

  walked to the edge of absence; all moments going,

  gone; bells through rain

  to fall on the carved names of the lost. I saw

  love’s child uttered,

  unborn, only by rain, then and now, all future

  past, an unseen. Has forever been then? Yes,

  forever has been.

  2014

  Stone Love

  (for Tracey Emin)

  I married a tall, dark, handsome stone

  in its lichen suit; secret, sacred, the ceremony

  above the sea; where the stone had stood

  for a million years, stoic, bridegroom,

  till I came at last to the wedding-day.

  Gulls laughed in a blue marquee of air.

  Shroud for a dress, barefoot, me, my vows

  my business and the stone’s; but should you ever

  press your face to a stone’s old, cold, still breast,

  you’ll find the words which spliced me there

  to the silence of stone, till death . . . slow art

  of stone, staunchness of stone . . . do us part.

  My hand on what I take from time and this world

  and the stone’s shadow there on the grass with mine.

  2018

  CXVI

  Our two heads on one pillow, I awake

  to hear impediments scratch in the room

  like rats.

  I let you sleep, dream on.

  Your face

  is summer, cloudless, innocent; it blooms.

  My kiss, a dying bee grazing a rose.

  Something is wrong.

  Or let a sonnet prove

  the star we followed more than failing light

  from time long gone.

  Love is not love.

  Your heart on mine, I feel, a marriage rite –

  but on the floor there lie no wedding clothes.

  Don’t stir.

  The curtains won’t permit the sun.

  Our minds are distant; sullen earth, cold moon

  Out of the corner of my eye,

  I see them flit,

  dark inklings, verminous.

  Let me admit . . .

  2018

  Physics

  In the multiple universe theory

  of quantum physics

  we did get married.

  For better and for worse,

  we are there and there, elsewhere;

  not here,

  where I stand, solo, free as a spinster,

  barefoot on warm grass,

  sinking a spritzer,

  gleeful . . . There is a God . . .

  and you

  are wherever; beyond care.

  But I do wonder

  how we are doing,

  the flipside of that swithering coin,

  after the nuptials,

  petals in our hair.

  You walk towards me across the terrace,

  all I want of love

  in that world –

  correct when you promised

  all would be well. Well,

  then again, I feign sleep at your footfall

  and we are in Hell.

  2018

  Roundstone

  On the beach at Roundstone,

  where my parents’ ashes

  had separately embarked,

  I walked out of love.

  I deciphered my mother’s advice

  from the sea’s lisp, its wheesht,

  as I crossed the line in the sand

  some lover had scored through a heart.

  And it wasn’t a mobile phone

  I put to my ear, but a conch;

 

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