Big Love Songs


I

at the top of the hill
the burnt hull of a boat

lifted here for us to see
what might be preserved

below, they load containers
onto working ships.

I sit to read your poems
in large Georgia type

of your desire to stand
in a slim space of myth.

I appreciate them more
above the harbour world

like you, friend, content 
to talk through the veil.



II

a fine roughness, the cover
excites my fingertips

the cloth dirtied in places
by love’s oily hands.

no wider than a finger
the spine, which arches

towards the poems, bound
in wisdom and rhyme.

I fold the cover back
and press a thumb

deep into the density of pages,
parting near the middle

to read again the words
which brings us to this line.