The love nest

Joy came to him far from memories, where sea gulls,
lost in flight, crossed the dusk between wind and rain,
the rocks and the sand and the loneliness of the cliffs.

Now without the sea and the barn with its tufts of smoke,
now far from the old tavern of blackened walnut wood
with sunlit copper, the smugglers, the luck and gratitude,
angel bread, burnt sugar, the smell of distilled alcohol -
Was it the swift movement of birds, was it the voice
of the wind that led him towards....

I still see you, love. It is love
that did not make sense
when I lived without realising
your way of looking at the wind, the waves.
You heard laughter in the screams of the gulls.
You saw spiders and felt their music,
far from my days watching doors
surprised by their certainty
always to open at a pale dawn
without darkness but
moonlit water and soft sounds.

I recall your face without remorse.
No mental scars, no hope, no secrets,
already free of your flesh, away from the lonely lie,
with innocence intact and a lover’s lasting silence.

I still see you, love. It is love
that does not make sense,
the glitter on the foam of a wave
how it arrives at our love nest,
enters the harmony of the open roof,
climbs the rain drenched acacia tree, leaps from
the wings of the gulls into the hand
of old John sitting in his back yard
where he raises his glass with sheer happiness and
when Sally comes running wild with kisses,
it lights up her bangles and cleanses me
from hopelessness.

And I still see you, love. It is love
that drove me senseless.
Lift your face into the wind with the promise
of spring, the jubilant fruit of your body,
lovely in smoothness and shyness,
when night falls and the sky grows
and the sea returns intimate,
when happiness revives, far from memory,
the pain and the truth, that once was ours.