Flare
The matchstick woman swims
for the last time
light as gauze
blade thin
it takes three grown men
her son his two sons
perhaps to help her down
the beach club steps
tuck the float around her
push her off into the deep
she’s wearing blue support socks
white all-in-one that would fit a child
her hair tight under a swimming cap
her body a question mark
the sea is mirror and movement
she is nearly ninety-one years old
but in the water is a girl
striking out for the deck where
he is always waiting and
she is smiling as her bones unfurl
her skin sun-kissed
smoothing to a shine
and she tells herself she’s
been the hiss and flare
of sulphur and its after-burn
it’s been worth the wait
to get back here
to this first time
Gramineae
speaking of the different types you …
for example cereal bamboo lawn are
nearly ubiquitous in …
and it takes stem hollow leaf sheath to …
don’t forget savannah prairie tundra
are known habitats that …
always choose yours carefully
from buffalo wheat kentucky blue so …
water gently tread but …
and remember you say
of the different types
rushes sea and sedge are not …
smoking it is …
no one likes a …
and it is never ...
on the other side
The distance between us
Seen from our windows it’s your lawn,
mine, the shape trees make on the sky.
It’s trains and cattle in damp fields,
how birds inexplicably sing at midnight.
It’s a particular moon and night-clouds
which are sometimes the colour and size
of wolves. It’s roads of course, children
and the density of other people’s voices
in the dark. It’s you near a humming
sea; the wind sounding
as wind sounds inside a conch shell,
the curl of shore-waves shining
like metal shines because the sun
is setting. And it’s when we’re in the same place,
briefly, and it’s pouring out of the green glass jar
I keep hidden in the pocket of my best winter coat.