Who first to find your shoes
parked neatly below your bed
knew they wouldn't wear your feet again,

and touch them like doves,
vouchsafed vestige,
remurmured coo.

Burnished pockets still clang
echoes of your face and like her ghost
the place that haunts your back.

No secret to her who kept last vigil
the one letter to your wife you couldn't burn,
parried lines from Tristram Shandy,

filigree of her hand and your
love wing flapped and reflapped
like piebald butterfly.

I'll never not stoop to retrieve a nickel
nor find buffed silver on cumulonimbus
and not think of you and Michaelangelo.

(published in Oasis, July 2001)

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