I  never heard you from the river.
How could I hear your call?
Sometimes you didn’t understand me.
I brought grey bread to an old one,
I didn’t take a thing.
Why did I go away from you?

I am so shy when I first meet you.
We walk a plank across a river
to an abandoned hut. You call
my name in your language for me.
This is when I found a one
in my girl’s frame, and now is everything

that snapped me off any thing.
You gave me grapefruit you.
My skin becomes a river.
I hear my mother call.
I know you understand me
and the war is never won.

Hunchback soldier is my one.
I cannot say the th in thing,
I say sing and smile in you.
They pulled a body from the river,
could anybody hear that call?
Not my parents no not me.

Your uniform is rough on me.
I gave you a watch, the only one
you never wore, the stopped gold thing
in your drawer ticked after you
had swum ghost river.
You may never hear my call.

When we got the midnight call,
I knew that you had slipped from me,
and I had been your only one.
Where is that fading falling thing?
I want to kiss the why in you
and bathe you in my river.

Will the river hear your call?
Someone in me is turning over
a leaf of you, a fragile thing.

 

(photograph: by Mark Mayes)

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