the visitor

one day you made the morning azure

you made twenty-three degrees Celsius taste like fresh-cut lawn

and orangeade

you gave the breezes

that drifted indoors

up the staircase

and across the dark green carpet

smooth aerobic fingers

*

one day you drew my attention to the far end

of the garden

where a row of blackcurrant bushes

formed a hedgerow

with a small white gate

that opened onto an unseen road

within the wood beyond

*

one day you fit the upper atmosphere into an arpeggio

and whispered in my ear

of quiet moonlit glades

iridescent inlets

and mighty icebergs

of hydrogen peroxide

melting upon remote celestial bodies

*

one day you assured me that I could accomplish anything

one day you proved to me that I could not

one day you revealed that empathy and reason

constitute only part of our nature

and that for every splendour

there is an equal horror

*

one day you deferred not to answer my silly

nagging questions

as to how I might have vivid recollections

of various decades from before I was born

or how the immeasurable volume

of one’s hopes and dreams

might be compressed into such a finite amount

of human matter

*

one day

when the hour had grown rather late

you led me into the chamber that lies behind my optic disc

where all of my hours had gone

to accumulate

there

within the centre of the dark

I felt the warmth of stars long dead

and heard the crackle of fading radio waves

pulsing in time with our heart