Homesick

Over fifty years

I reach for you from

The high end of a piano keyboard.

I Walk my fingers

Towards you in a minor key.

I pause a little on ebony and

Feel a little giddy.

Is this that vertigo?

Are you looking down on me?

Playing with the fragile guts of an audio tape

Leading back to the year of your death:

Nineteen sixty-four.

Five years before I was born.

I can Imagine the clouds you soared beneath

Climbing the winding thermal stair.

Now I am responding to a painted patch of blue-

Just as you would have wanted.

In my own way.

Along the echoing passage

One of my favourite people ever was

Mary, deaf and dumb her infinite love-

As a child I did everything I could to avoid her kisses.

Now, in that same patch of blue I feel her

Like the Atlantic pulling on the land’s end.

I find a broken shell upon the shore.

I'm missing home and

Sick, sick, sick because

My home is where my wings hang all wan and wasted after the fight

Upon the stair, its feathers ruffled into attention.

A place to rest?

The landing is where I make my bed between floors.

Above and below the

Doors creak.

There is just one ajar

Where the light pierces the dark

Like a tapered wing

Or a sharp tongue

Or a knife.