A rising scent: a lush and nettled green.

A sheen of swallows soaring into view.

 

I give my time (my ticking life) 

to watching weather bleat and blow 

 

along the river-banks, or simmer 

like a mist of heat in every passing 

 

rushy patch, long, drifting links 

of meadowsweet a-whisper at the verge. 

 

The light is lilting now, laconically slow:

the sun beds down, a copper god, 

 

in meadow-marigold at dusk, the sky 

a burning blue. I breathe the ancient summer in 

 

before it dims. I died, you know, a beat or two, 

when I rowed my stony days and nights 

 

away from broken me-and-you, a burial at sea:

my sunken self-mythology, a memory 

 

that flows. The flailing creature I’ve become 

will curl into the sun-restoring dark, 

 

a nervy coil, and twitch in pummelled pulses 

to repeat, in dream, the falling-mountain-water blue 

 

I slipped into – to look you in the eyes. I’m everything 

I was when I reneged: weeping poetry, a brutal, 

 

brimming boy; an egomanic in love. I barely 

recognise you, you replied. And finally: goodbye.