A park, a cleared space, its cooling swathes of blade.
In the distance: an airport’s metal arguments
trail into the stratosphere, then flocks
of fruit bats swarming in panic across an afternoon sky.
Present leaks meagre, taught bulbs
of memory, still and lake-dank,
coagulating into panic across an afternoon sky.
The two points and the love between them are dissolving.
The obstinate enamel of dates is dissolving.
Twig-like bones threaded through wing are dissolving.
I am a faint scar on the lip of a woman.
I am paint spread evenly across the frame of an open window.
I am the flood through a valley after rain.
The land is cool, remote.
The is cool, remote.
A clearing…
the magpies’ beaks are splitting the contours
of the voice.
The sun trips and spills across the grass:
we are drying out
in a leaf’s yellowing tissue.
Home is rising in steamy trunks
and freezing into static.
On resting beneath the figs we are embraced
by their lumbering tools.
We are watching the firmament fall from us,
leaving us with ourselves.