Prolonged Immersion.

Rebuke, or pity? Spurning all life-skill guides,
oblivious to shellfish jaws and stings that leave
sure swimmers keeling, she dived young, keen to prise,
eviscerate and string the seeds.
                                                  The first heave
mesmerised.  The seven sea-tentacles unfurled,
artful to drag her down. The laden wrecks
rebuffed her questing hands.
                                             The glass-green swirl
yawed, paused and shifted her past hope of land.

Meshed with slow swells she grins and glides,
adrift on moon-drugged tides, which at their flood
roll, roll her  shorewards, till brine cold rhythms guide
this prisoner from deeps misunderstood.

In the sea's time, formless remains are hurled
naked, flesh gorged by seabirds, spent, unpearled.

 Revenant


At parting, saying -
"Let us agree we both prefer
'Goodbye' to tears.  Learn to accept
and not condemn. The past
never was the future's stage."
A carriage window sliced this valediction.


Work, infidelities and towns
slipped by to undiscovered ends,
while the unquiet ghost for half a lifetime
turned triumph - yes, even that - to puffs of smoke -
(Mists laid on English shires at twilight,
fingers on a candid lip in sleep . . . )


Then in some undistinguished capital,
Buda?  Trieste? - in just that sort
of backwater cafe where conversations
hatched against despair
stutter towards another rented pillow,
the smoky lights revealed -
skin no longer absolutely young,
the smile that lay in wait -
a dress that could not - surely -  be the same?


"No logic, dearest, please,
or laying blame.  I answered only
the motiveless appeal of happiness . . "
(Quoting another poet! At such a meeting!
I should have . . . )
Ah, but her fingers, placed
with such complicity, such care,
placed where the bloodstroke like a habit burns,
sought my acceptance of her affirmation.


My actress on her stage,
ageless and English,
her tear precluding tears.