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             JOHN ALLISON

Port Levy, Listening

                        Where did this knowing come from?

                       

                        Prattling at the prow of the yacht.

                        Lipping at the limbs of stone.

 

                        And in the hiss of kelp, heaving

                        like your rising gorge,

                        or a child's bad dream, strands

                        from the drowned gorgon's head.

 

                              And in the slow

                              metabolisms of

 

                              the rockpool

                              vesicles of light

 

                              continued breathing

                              systole/diastole

 

                              their fragile

                              membranes pulsate

 

                              with obscure

                              and maybe cross

 

                              purposes.

 

                        Afterwards, beneath the macrocarpas

                        in the smells of sex and resin.

 

                              It was the way

                              you laughed

 

                              and hurried back

                              into sunlight.

 

                        You might have heard it then,

                        in that silence just before the words.

 

                              It was the end

                              of something

 

                              which we did not

                              quite begin.

 

                        Where does the knowing come from?

 

                        Noiseless in the branches,

                        muted on the moonlit water.

 

                        Voices, voices. And the long night

                        slips beneath our eyelids.