Small and watchful as a lighthouse,
A pure clear place of no particular childhood,
It is as if the sea had spoken in you
And then the words had dried.
Bitten and fostered by the sea
And by the British spring,
There seems only this one way of happening,
And a poem to prove it has happened.
Now I am close enough, I open my arms
To your castle-thick walls, I must learn
To use your wildness when I lock and unlock
Your door weaker than kisses.
Maybe you are a god of sorts,
Or a human star, lasting in spite of us
Like a note propped against a bowl of flowers,
Or a red shirt to wear against light blue.
The bed of your mind has weathered
Books of love, you are all I have gathered
To me of otherness; the worn glisten
Of your flesh is relearned and reloved.
Another unstructured, unmarried, unfinished
Summer, slips its unclenched weather
Into my winter poems, cheating time
And blood of their timelessness.
Let me have you for what we call
Forever, the deeper opposite of a picture,
Your leaves, the part of you
That the sea first talked to.
