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i Alzheimer’s
Once she found a goldcrest’s nest, tucked it carefully in a crook, made sure the entrance was clear and open.
Recently the winds have blown it far from the tree, are gently taking it apart.
ii Infarct
The last dominoes perch unsteadily. The rest have fallen so that their black sides are uppermost, the numbers and the narrative mostly obscured.
Sometimes in the night I think I hear your footsteps, see you stretch a hand to lead me into your country, your mind which is incandescent with lights like Christmas candles, or still like a deep pool inhabited by golden carp, thoughts which fan the water as delicately as fins, barely rippling; or flick in a shower of neon across to the other shore, leaving me gasping for breath. Sometimes you arrive like a flamenco dancer; sometimes a small wind swimming through leaves, and as I turn you’ve already left, and only the trees swaying to show your passage. Sometimes you are an incantation on the lips of someone else a vowel not quite uttered a syllable just caught a faraway tune. Sometimes you are a hawk hanging on the wind. I like it best when I turn from the kitchen where sunlight is stroking the tiles and walk out into the summer morning, grass still wet and the garden shaking off night, and you’re there in the extravagance of hibiscus, or under the lime tree; or waiting on the doorstep in the basket of bursting figs, bloom still untouched, like tomorrow.
Jacob can keep his Ladder with its busy hosts of angels.
This is as close to heaven as I might wish to be—
this still corner of this spinning world, your hot tongue on my hot skin,
and outside, somewhere else, a small rain washing the dust off things.
and nameless places
to that twig quivering where the bird isn’t
to the tilt of our lives towards and away from each other
to words and to speaking without them
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