She Waits
Wrinkle weave of neck skin as
his smooth pate is part
screwed around to a footfall....
....stands a girl who has practised
being pretty since small, is now all
glimpsed lace and soft allure.
Her presence registered, his neck re-aligns
and he tells himself that he is glad to be old
and bald and looked beyond, that it is not
his blank windows that her round eyes are
fixated upon. His own experience knows that
— in refusing to believe that her repertoire of
pretty expressions, pretty gestures, can be
turned aside from — her child’s anger
will be at the entire landscape, at its every
fold and contour; to be seen ever again
only with face-tight loathing....
She looks.
She waits.
In this still bright light, for a single hour
after a day of rain, over the other side
of the tide-ruffled channel, blue cliffs
and clouds are carved out of
a soft-stone sky.
Page(s) 26
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