an early spring sun that strengthened and weakened,

coming and going like an old mind.

I watched like one bedridden for a long time

on their first journey back into the world

who finds it enough to be going on with:

the way the sunlight brought each possession in turn

to its attention and made of it a small still life:

the iron frying pan gleaming on its hook like an ancient find,

the powdery green cheek of a bruised clementine.

Though more beautiful still was how the light moved on,

letting go each chair and coffee cup without regret

the way my grandmother, in her final year, received me:

neither surprised by my presence, nor distressed by my leaving,

content, though, while I was there.

Last Summer

I want to come back as sunlight

to steal over everything I own

with the warmth of skin

that isn’t there.

I want to concentrate:

to fill each room for an hour

as if the house were a kind of clock

without hands or a face.

I want to shine with a disinterest

approaching love

on the life laid aside

so hastily this morning:

the flowered dress discarded

as too last-summer

this book I’ve been reading

to get me to sleep.

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter

It could be love that’s brought you here –

to stand at this window

with your unlined face

tilting a future towards the light

that’s clear as white spirit.

Outside time is sliding by

like ice on the river,

but this stillness is a ring

you might keep forever

in a silk-lined box,

the air redolent of beeswax,

life humming faintly in the rooms beyond

like a rumour of summer.

You may never be happier

dressed in your scrap of cloudless sky

holding the words

you’ve been sent from somewhere else.

*

If I could I’d step into

this dimension of light,

become the woman who stands alone at its centre

casting no shadow,

whose unreadable face

is so absorbed in the world of her letter

she doesn’t notice how close

this moment is to heaven:

a tender geometry

of walls and air

where her body is held forever,

clothed in the blue of hyacinth and distance,

where even the spaces between things

are part of the meaning.

*

You’ve lived so long inside this room

it’s become your world –

the lustre of discarded pearls,

the softer sheen of satin and skin

more real to you now than food or debts,

the boatman’s distant cries on the river.

No wonder you hesitate

before lifting the tip of your brush

for the very last time.

It will feel like stepping out of a dream –

the light streaming untroubled

from its invisible source,

and the woman you wrapped in lapis

lost in her thoughts,

the love unfolding without you.

Guest Room

Whatever you thought you wanted here –

clean sheets, nail scissors, book –

has slipped your mind completely