keys
the old man boots across the loam, dirt and rubble
carries each day of the hour on the ties of a clock
keys and coin wrestle in his fore pocket
a spanner in a back pouch, a child in flight, a tool for digging
four rowan fruit hard inside the dark bush beneath skin
lemons, olive and soil sing out in winter song
beat breath balk his stumbling heart, can you hear the buckling
all day
the fleshy gut’s suspicion hangs tocking and docking
each of the first three chambers where weight sways and unlocks
a book
a poem
a letter
space in the upper chamber most enduring
in excavation, each unclicking of the day undressed
as the hours web and whittle as bodies soften
uncloth the eyelids of the afternoon’s fold and placed away
the sound of that last key, clinking and clamouring
your name your name your name, still there
have you held them, my love
once opened with a surgeon’s scalpel
tin pan filled with flesh and blood and muscle
before the bullet chambers and I reverse time, for you
place myself on the scale with your now shaven hair
another you to hold and to keep I, long over the sea
in a pocket of denim as you roam the world alone
the clocking in the chest, the dangling notch by notch
the heart unlocks and the words fall out the door’s eye hole
still rusty and half seeing and small in the hand
the clocking in the chest, the dangling notch by notch
the heart unlocks and the words fall out the door’s eye hole
still rusty and half seeing and small in the hand
remember as the weight clanks on the floor
the sound nudging against your thighs, you walk far away
with bird song in your pocket and a body of defiant rusted metal
rustling the locked swinging in the park, the children gone
the garden’s fence where fennel and tomato grew with eggplant
once we walked through grape and tea, the wind
where grass still grows in the shadow
you are not alone
for: wan-lin
