These curtains, how they fluttered like wings.

The singer, however, was no ugly eagle or aeroplane egg, the camera zoomed

         in of its own accord

It’s like a postcard holiday home.

Not present. Misrepresented. Waving hello

– or the silent applause of lost nights?

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Rapid flicker of infection. An infant’s chest x-ray

breeds a terror of frailty, and all the wings are helpless angels:

these sodden days, we are taken by updraughts as spindrift across a shadowed city.

Keep breathing

keep dancing in the wind

keep faith with that which you never can be

… but are haunted to be; a ghost-name lost on the tongue

a fortified keening – rising, rising

into a banshee scream

that could turn the Eiffel Tower to rubble and raise the living

or raise the waves of sonnet leaves, wagga-fish leaping in all directions

Each morning, high in the attic, you can hear her humming as she stitches

         feathers onto gauzy curtains,

and the air comes from everywhere

but the past is a painting a journey on the wing on the edge

Is there time to refashion?

the boasts of tennis court oaths, the blood spittle of consumptive

         love melding on page, canvas and empty video spools