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THAT OL’ SILVERY

You can find yourself gobsmacked by light –

this shaft of moon troubadouring pell-mell down your ceiling,

solid-looking, milk-white – the kind a child from Sendak

might slide down, though not quite. Edges so sharp they could cut.

It overlays the yellower neon

refracted from town through our many-paned glass

into squares, blocks, rhomboids – rooms in which to drift . . .

Light as a leaf your hand on mine measures our present life together.

Shouldn’t this be enough – space, amplitude of light?

But then the ‘fat relentless ego’. So words come into it. And with them,

a tipping. A sudden plummet into projects of disclosure. Night

clocks on. And all the while through the idiot clamour,

the folly of the orbiting argument,

the moon keeps tracking Earth’s slow turn in space . . .

Light as a leaf your hand beside mine. Palms beam their signals out.