Les Tournels

In Winter, when the evenings
close in and daylight slips
away, draining out the sky,
the house is quieter
than Summer months,
when children are tricked
into thinking that the world
shines longer for them,
now that they have the time
to see it.

There is a picture of a girl
standing on a sloped vineyard
in France. Her tiny right hand
tries to shield her brown eyes
from the slant of the late evening
sun. Her face beams with the
exhaustion of a child’s Summer.

Later, when it is dark and the blue
bay outside has lulled her to sleep,
her white blond hair fans out
in a semi-circle, veins
of curls like a bleached
sunrise laid out on a
goose-down pillow.

Point of Departure

The sky moans and the evening sinks
to its knees.
I sit in the subsiding bungalow,
hosted by the roll of steps
that have thinned out the carpet
under feet,
long-since gone.

These walls are points of departure,
spored with memories,
to which
you are now threaded.

Absence presses on the single-storey of loss,
the single-glazed windows shiver off
the grime
of years,
dirt and time
lodged under finger-nails.

With my fingers on the floor,
I can trace our story
on the unstitching fabric,
its torn ends are the worn braille
of our lives.