Four Poems

Altered

There was an island. And the sea of course, that too.
How it crashed and sprayed and varied the tune.
The one that had always played in her head. Gone.
Light came from stone not sky (which was blue).

So when she met you, what else was there?
Who was she to argue
with a sunset the colour of peach stones
and that easy sliver of a moon?

Yes there was wine. But the landscape had already altered
those questions left over in her mind
from some colder, greyer place she couldn't quite remember.
Under the bed, in a black suitcase, the ticket to return remained.


10.45 to Stockholm

In the dining car a woman sits alone in a booth,
her white hair wisping into a lunch
...