the twilight is as green as greenstone
and there’s a cold front coming.
the flattened sea pushes against stones like
a crowd

sighing at a dropped catch.

soft beds and hard pillows
and sunken beds and pillows gone
and floorboards twice trod, thrice!
way past midnight outside room 19
and rain a handful of pebbles ‘gainst the window.

from
serrated
arrettes
to the lake
snow blown down.
the steepness continues
below the surface on which
a hundred happy yachts
beat into the
sou-wester.

round ev’ry bend another vista —
and we’re arguing
pushing the old dissatisfactions around
like stubborn ice on the windscreen.

all this
landscape
means nothing,
it’s as temporary
as your warm arms
fleeting as the sunlit peaks
gone round ev’ry bend.

April 2001