LOVEDAY WHY

Concordance

They were Weslyan    she was Church   

after his father died (less dour)     she let him run wild  forawhile 

His father had   climbed up the mine shaft    and turning for home

there was a motorcycle spoiled    at the foot of a    wind

that was only ever darkness      there was punishment   of several sorts

it was a furniture van     sticks of a home burst on the road

this verse refers to      that verse    when we met in Keswick

they played  violins by ear  and called them fiddles   Irish Manx is different to Cumbrian Scots

he minded about things so destroyed photographs

in the front of Arabian Nights there had been   a coloured pencil drawing of her

soft hair

everything he did was complex   and tender and wrong like petals

trying   to carry rain

there had been a child before  him    who had  lived a day

and she    she too had hurried her     dreams    through    every tilt of grieving

LOVEDAY WHY

I can't watch the sea for a long time or what happens on the shore doesn't interest me any more

There were never more than one pair    of hands emptying out the river    and repacking the banks    hiding from the fish the true way to the ocean           keeping in small wet pockets the gathered silt and the shelf    the alert bricks broken down all the bricks placed in a semi circle    and crushed the softened wood    I know who you are I know just who you are    The hands that refill the waters with water     the fish that travel to the river mouth  then spiral    then   return again    The hands that make a keel for the whole body upright    knifing itself on the cool water    the real blisters rising on the step    where the silver straps cross    The hands that part life from life    gather up wet sheets    scoring in the air the slipped sound of a last moon    falling up from a first breath    The hands that part life from life    pass a shade over the eyes     the bodies      being too far away and rigged    No one made love like we did no one ever possibly will    holding our wrists to the insides of our knees    We never matched the tracks of our veins    never held the water in our mouths    These hands never learned how to separate or join    how the unheld grow    taking off their clothes to wait for the Spring    how the mythed speak with the voices of water    a name next to a triumph in the paper                                       she tore    with her feet