Three Poems

Galaxidi

Those golden hairs I’m stroking on your thigh
I only get to glimpse in this Greek light
and only here do claw-snags on my hand,
(from grappling with our lunch of garavides,
the Greek word for the local langoustines)
the back of which has those dark freckle marks
my grampa called his ‘grave-spots’, catch
on your glittering Galaxidi-gilded hairs.

Mulberry

This mulberry tree’s in Newcastle because
I remembered a taverna balustrade,
where, longer armed than me, you stretched
up to the branch-slung lightbulb
mulberries were in orbit round
and that bit sooner ripened by,
and picked some so almost poached your touch,
though light, burst open their black blebs
and bled juice trickled down your reaching arm
into your armpit down to this cupped pap,
the purple plenty, from those few plump fruit,
the erubescence more roseate round this breast,
my tongue still got slight tangs of when I licked
your mulberry-scumbled areola rim.

UNO, Geneva

Not very far away
from the avenue de la Paix
peacocks preen and pose
in the Jardin botanique.

One of Gustave Revilliod’s
Japanese peacocks squawks
a kind of kung fu shriek
and in the air above are patient hawks.