Interlude (1)

Talking to youis a frame of mind:I rejoice,you whisper prayersin your ancient tongue,nothing’s settled.…………………………………………………………………………………………Outside, periwinter. Trees flaking in a stiff breeze river ruffled by tide’s feathers. We come and go like travellers on a railway platform looking for the face in the crowd that’ll make all the difference. Maybe it’s time to begin something? I’ve had my winters snowed in with melancholy lying prone on a bed of no movement and I used to be afraid of silence but now it strokes me. The unattainable is a mineshaft; you are a figment of my imagination a palpable longing with no edges. To box you in would shear the mystery. Last night I dreamt of you, being cruel in the way only you know how to.………………………………………………………………………………………Listening to youfinds a beatin the pulseI always knewexisted.……………………………………………………………………………………….When we talk it’s as if our sentences are continuous beads of light on a spring morning where the wet grass’s dew soaks bare feet and the sun catches grey in the stubble of a beard. There may have been months of silence in-between, but our lines are sweet, flowing into each other with pregnant undulations, and it’s never what is said but the caresses of my dreams float underneath like a benediction. You’re always returning and returning to your theme but my Jewishness is dormant I don’t feel it, simply feel the empathy that’s always been locked in. Today the rain falls in grey rivulets you’ve gone to the New Forest, to ”find yourself” and that’s not a metaphor, I’ve said you couldn’t find yourself if you bumped into you, Next week we’ll eat mushrooms, drink red wine, talk our complications.……………………………………………………………………………………….Nothing’s settlednothing mattersthis is what we’redue.