Clear in the Dark
In the daylight I was possessive,
greedy with time around you, in my
thin-knit sweaters and coughing fits,
unhealthy breath and half-off expressions,
it took some doing, some convincing task,
bad winds cross-wise blowing to be ignored,
twinkles of half-recognition to be misheard.
By midday's apprehension hung aloft high noon
star, it had started to fade as washing line linen,
two hands running fingers apart each other
for the same squalid reasons as all else;
mince words, stall sayings, cool over
beverage cups finding lacked grace.
In the nighttime's pale dancing motions,
tongue kissing barmaids were it so simple,
you were all made-up and painted, pretty
as magazine covers to the rest of the world, but
never better than in morning's simple shades to me:
it was so clear, so darkly true.
Torrential
The rains fell heavy, dark morning on the
green isle grand, clamped the bike locks
and sheet metal, the construction workers'
stickered-yellow hardhats in reflective colours
of misty tartan kind.
As umbrellas flashed open, torn-toss asunder
by the coastal's blighted gustings,
ghosts of drowned fishers filling the lighthouse
boardwalk, past phrases bespeaking still the shore,
salty Atlantic tongue taste.
Held a sketched map of Canada in the
shape of your face, between cardboard
Fosters' coasters and flickered light of the
TV set, half-thrown to the ocean-bay, half
wishing water's end.
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