Love Poems

	The Swans I peered over the conquered space Water was calm and bottle-blue And pancaked nervous light years Into a murmured liquid snore From the velvet runway leading Ganglionic men to a distant town A white ghost floated inaudibly Drowning some winking points I was staring down heaven's throat My love flashed briefly through The night grass of the slender towpath A barge of white feathers played dice Collecting fragments of the moon's Reflection split by the lolling breeze I might have pulled her from the depths Or was that the song of the wind My love's lamplight crossed the stern Mirroring the cold act of the stars One light swung back and forth Tracing a question upon the canal Her white hand drew ripples there Streaking black ink across the swan And startling the pillow of reeds That wished this way and that A raindrop snared the surface The ghost slipped off the bank Uttering grassy whispers As the pale shape of her approached I felt the pursing wave-whoosh As she brushed a bullrush aside Her gentle foot-falls married the earth To her lamp. She smiled and we kissed. And just then the swan arched a wing Over the oily black. I turned to her And she picked a constellation down From a sky now smudged in the dark © David Incoll 2001
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