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.