Tim
Kiely

                        … no blue and yellow morning in which 

                        your stretching spine perfected itself 

                        and their skin was rosy; no night where their hands 

                        were wind and moonlight over your valleys; 

                        no listless work evenings; no changing of the sheets;

                        no sitting apart to decompress 

                        as the flat hummed gently. You were always flame 

                        even on the low-burning days;

                        the fruit you took at their well-known lips 

                        was always sharper. And the recall 

                        of all of this says there is nothing 

                        either ignoble or easy 

                        about the simple attempt to tell it:

                        coming back to the bench in Congo Square 

                        the greens are deeper, the stones sashay

                        in a different rhythm, newly alive 

                        each time it happens. It was never the same

                        after you were asked, and you said ‘yes’.