RECALLING INNOCENCE

I

Unmanaged branches, slouched against the rails
Of crumbling steps, unwind towards my crib,
Beneath which the tide rolls. A rusting snib


Seals shut its emptiness, and salt-bleached nails


Restrain the sky, whose violent winter gales
Bend back the flecks of paint that sheet each rib


Of twisted pine. Its planks of peeled-off gib


Shiver quietly, where, reaching through the walls,

You enter also the quiet house of my heart
Your footsteps like the ghost-light on the sill,


The murmuring of something not quite there.


Beyond the house, I watch the sea depart,
And hear in birds the cold wind of the will


Blow through the private strictures of my ear.

II

Returned, unrested by the clouding weather,
This wet turmult of waves across the sand
Is like the nurtured tremble of your hand


Beneath my hand. Where oystercatchers gather


Inside the estuary, their shards of feather
A shining welt of dark that grips the land


Between tight claws, we speak to understand


The mystery that draws their salts together,

Ourselves together. Wind, whose truth unbinds
The tenderness of words, alike in their wings


And in the shudder of our thumbs, make known


The gulf in which our incidence unwinds.
Loveless, fickle, what life the current swings


It strips away: unthinking through the bone.

---

Return to CONTENTS