We don’t speak of ourselves

with the same coloured eyes

any more,
or with a honeyed sweetness

on the tongue. We taste

our bodies with the caress
of a hand,

a surreptitious foray

into the dark
of fingers touching fingers.

The smell of coffee

thickens.
This place

built between hills,

reminds me
of a woman's pelvis.

On a cold day

it becomes the focal point
of brightness, of expressions

of deep growth,

a moist reek
of beginnings –

people first up in the morning,

pushing out faces
blinking in the winter,

the frost on wires,

blowing small thermal eruptions
from pink mouths.

I lick in the caffeine

as if I’d just been kissed.
Being born each day

helps

in the unravelling of trees,
in the forcing apart of dark skies.

I take to the road

shoving back
the crisply-cut hedges,

the glow-worm curtains. And

there's always the latecomers,
the stragglers

drifting home to their holes

after dark.
The morning is a flawless

brilliance of waking

and a jewelled dampness
mirrors the appearance of others.

I seem to be living

in the transparent softness
of a giant lens

far from the way

we discovered ourselves
night-struck, but surviving –

the contusions of dreams

slowly healing.