That boat you see, tourist in this land of travellers, 
claims it once brought clay urns to Pithacusæ,  
to store wine and grain, and sometimes babies, stillborn, 
slipped into those cold second wombs by silent husbands… 

        Beneath
lizard bellies of planes… 

I swallowed a cherry stone by mistake
in the trifle at my best friend’s party,
and her uncle John said just you wait…

until the thaw, when whores alone, pinning
coils of hair by shifting candlelight, pause,
and dream of a man awakened from snow.

I might have met you here, windows for our back-drop,
a blood-orange sun, a burning sea, and me…

Tap, tap, tapping 
I wait
between bed and chair…

Groom feathers breeze-blown, mouse-stained.
Know the songs of winds between hills.