The Devonian Period

The luggage trolley
veers left, further left,

skids and judders
on its rubber wheels,
a curveting horse on linoleum,

as she steers it past
the milk-glass doors
that meet and seal behind her.

She is small and big-eyed
as a child, flushed,
stalled amid the savvy
and rush of Arrivals.

She navigates
the babel-full hall.

Babies parcelled
in anoraks are handed
to grandparents. Girlfriends
cradle cellophaned roses.

We meet. I am five feet five
and a half. Her nose meets
the notch in my collar-bone.

* * *

That week, we breakfast
on brown bread sliced
tomb-stone thick,
the bread, she's sure,
of my wildest, most
diasporate desires.

We link arms on the train,
chat to our hollow-faced
reflections in the dark
window, wince at the pain
of brakes rounding ox-bow
turns, crooked elbows,
along the track.

* * *

Through a slice of open door,
we watch the slaying
of squirrels. A raccoon
seething with rabies.

A ribbon of chimpanzee
screams. Grey belly heaving
like a fat furred heart
between branches.

The drop of something
through the dark, a pouchful,
soft fall and settle
among the high grass.

* * *

My temper, she knows,
is less igneous now,
slower to heat and erupt,
cooling off quickly to leave me
stone-faced, impassive,

surveying the topography
she unrolls, carpet-wise,
chaotic, in my house:
anarchic bedclothes;
a festoonery of jewellery
that mocks my one neat box;
the origami of receipts
crushed in pockets and purses;
longer hairs scrawling
cursive things in the sink.

* * *

Our ways are crusted
into us. I am one and one
third times her age
when she had me.

Without thinking, I dab
a crumb from the corner
of her mouth, and blinking
hugely blue, marram-lashed,
she lets me.