Nothing Outward
There was unease sulking in the bass line
the whole morning
while we were driving down through Worcestershire,
with reminders from the radio between us
of the issue that was pushing us apart.
Each lyric seemed contrived to make us draw
another inference of infidelity -
a fact which neither of us could admit
sufficiently to reach and turn it off.
Shame whined meanly in the treble clef,
in shrill insistence
that nothing outward had been untoward
and that it hadn’t mattered when attraction
was hastily denied and then admitted.
But even if we said a glimpse of glances
had caught the full extent of indiscretion,
could we resolve all tension in the theme
of betrayal lying only with the flesh?
Page(s) 58
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