Departures
The conversation crossed a curragh
and blundered, ungrammatical, into a
quiet quag. It waited, gasping
for samaritan adrenalin.
*
Moment passed, as celibate as
letters travelling long oceans of hour
between bleary memories, their inks
congealing on plain pages, sepia
before leaving the nib.
*
It was a stumble. When you reached
forlornly for your case, you took
a stammer from my mouth, snapped it:
swallowed it like a trouper, too -
and glued me to you.
*
A tide of echoes washed our parting
promises away: I watched the wake
behind the long cortège of your leaving.
*
Distance folded you like thin air
in a layer of water; your reflection
hurried mine down tumbled streams
over the rasp of rock, gentle flurries
of fern, and took our glaze of gaze
to a spacious waste of tousled sea:
it lay on a corrugation.
*
In a soft doldrum, we were waiting
for the next hesitation.