Monochrome and weighty, stood as if waiting,
these amazing units, so furniture yet angel.

Big eyes, big lashes, udders pink as bubble gum.
To get in among them and dare to settle a palm

on one great face, alike the others but too too unique.
To weep then, for the lives you haven’t lived but grieve.

All my life I must have grieved; for the one where
the blood pools in the ecstatic centres of my palms;

the one where the litigious gathering of counter-gossip
privately convicts me; the one where my smouldering

dashboard of medals and ribbons can’t dig me out,
as I reach to caress the flat outline of a dog I forget…

each division of coincidence landing like a footstep,
in the direction, first, of the house, then to the car,

trees whirring, every chevron seeming a replica
of the next, until in the unlikelihood of this room

I have arrived at last, to thank you.
For being touched by regular daylight.

For keeping your correspondences going,
your books in some vague order.

For even as the heavens clenched their jaw, you were
not me; a kindness we have kept in common.