From the 'Skirrid Hill' collection
The water torture of your heels
emptying before me down that Paris street,
evacuated as the channels of our hearts.
That will be one memory.
The swing of the tassels on your skirt
each step filling out the curve of your hip;
your wet lashes, the loss of everything we'd learnt.
That will be another.
Then later – holding each other on the hotel bed,
like a pair of sunken voyagers
who had thought themselves done for,
The second line of the refrain, concise and self-explanatory.
Valentine