The Closed Hand

I drink you in a curlicue of perfumed smoke,
elemi and juniper and papyrus
coalescing like the fused colours of a dream
bleeding into another dream.
I feel your need, sharp like liquor, honing
the soft edge of my being.
You light cigarettes in the courtyard,
talking of Vienna and Istanbul,
the etymology of this and that,
your words smooth and easy,
the speech refined.

I know your style of darkness,
the disused longing, the desire, the ache
blooming obliquely in the veneer.
I see your face aging backwards
in the half-light, smoothed by shadows,
a suggestion of some former self
surfacing on your skin;
the schoolboy is resurrected there
or the young man of twenty
or the adolescent, rowdy and unsure.
I watch your history replaying
in the sad tilt of your mouth,
the way you guard yourself,
the closed hand.

Wintering

Snow has clothed the trees,
dressing the branches like white silk
slipping over the upstretched arms
of a woman being fitted for her wedding dress.

The field is thick with Canada geese,
frosted squares of frozen grass
woven through with bright pools
of still water, reflecting everything
with absolute precision.

I might find you here, in the winter dark,
where woodsmoke coats the gelid air;
I could go to you as to a fire,
a haven for my wintering,
a temporary home.