Autumn heat, like a mid life affair
stronger than expected
a last burst of passionate embrace, energy and life.
Your footsteps crunch across the ploughed earth
chocolate and slick,
but pottery dry to the touch
My own feet shuffle up the cut grass
searching for wilder paths

How easy it would be
to run on into the evening
on my own feet
not seated, driven, carried
but running, like falling
past the trees
past the low light zoetroping 
through the branches
past the mirror water in the ditches 
on into the growing thickness of dusk.
Out of the covered paths
the moon will rise
and my eyes will widen to let her in 
and the world which was winter-bare
will have hidden places again

I put my feet on these boards
a gentle sway
with the water paths hidden from sight
but felt with the oar
with the wooden hull
the push.
I knelt there
the dog chained to the prow
thinking of the spray soaking my clothes
and the lurch turning into the wind around the island.

Old men chipping with adzes at what their wrinkled hearts wish they had lived.
wealthy men sliding sleek white swans of boats into mooring.
and the callous-handed young
hauling orange rope and blue nets
green weed and brown sludge
a girl somewhere perhaps
an uncle who approves
a white clapper boarded mill house
many windowed
watching them, unfeeling, come and go
on the tide.

under my pillow a swirl of your hair
like a charm
pushed into a form
by your end of day visits
and my night dreaming