Classic Poem

for R.M.



I love shaking the bones in your arm
the humerus, radius and ulna.

Some people have such bones –
men, like you, across the top of the back!

I love you at the train station
so young . . .

The song of that bird
executed only in the morning and evening.

I love the way
you just do it!

Perfect commas, two profiles, eyelashes
moles and turtles in your smile.

I love the movement between our reality
and imagination – that gold step

then my head empties into the whir of the day
all brain stem!

I love your judgement: chaise-longue
in that spacious room of possibility

filled with sun and poetry and music
and the pain you will not deny.

I love the little red hat
that makes you look like someone else

and the early fruit you pick for me
when I am overcome by ripeness.

I love fucking you
most of all:

there is no corresponding analysis
and we become very old and not yet born . . .

I love wrapping the bones of my legs around you
femur, tibia and fibula –

only with you
can I feel my heart.

I love its weightiness
that I have learned

through the long, slow practise
of you.