Tonight

Tonight we walk on the ghosts of pavements,
barefoot, backwards, sideways, down,
slide through the stone till our toes meet the silt,
burrowing mole-blind into the mud,
coating our skins with the wet, shiny darkness,
plastering, fingering, sculpting ourselves,
weaving arm around arm and finger in finger,
leaving legs to meander from delta to delta,
make a bed for the night in the folds of the river,
in lustrous cloacae, on shell-crusted silk.

Tonight we sleep a dreamless half-life,
dead to the world and deaf to the stars,
wake to the shout of the sun and the shadows
thrown by the clouds as they run off to sea,
break from the hold of our hard-baked bedclothes,
bathing our bodies in blue-green sky,
shedding our shells in the wind-whipped water,
seeking our selves in the eyes of the other,
find what was wanting and want what we find:
I, you in your eyes and you, me in mine.