A Long Round Rain
I caught a thunderstorm in a bottle of green glass
it spilled over the lip,
the ruffled surface,
dense, thin, broken,
caught up, curved by meniscus of memory
now that the storm is past.
I wish you had been here,
Oxford, town of Dons and devils.
When I looked for you,
'round the roundabout,
even your Cheshire smile had faded
your green fringed cape after image
wavering in dissipating heat reflection.
This international place,
washed by one thousand tongues,
still so terribly British.
I don't know if you'd have liked it,
being so strangely unforeign.
The heavens had seemed so clear,
I remember them blue only this morning.
Grey-white now,
a clean old sheet, tucked in around the sky.
If you were here
you'd pull it out at the corners
you'd shake it loose
you would dance it 'round your naked waist
'til it dried and split
revealing dense hot blue black night.
Tomorrow I'll turn around
I'll spin and weave a tempest into a tapestry,
the longest thread pulling me back to you,
pouring the water
in slow stream returning
to the sea.