Clothes blowing on the line for the first time

this enclosed Spring.

Pink t-shirt reaches out arms to clasp close

a child, a friend,

chin on the other’s warm shoulder – a long embrace.

But not today.

Cold wind breezes through the arms, the body

that cannot meet another.

At the track where I walk alone

white emperor clouds lounge in a song-blue sky

not seen since childhood.

The sun behind me throws down shadows of my lengthening hair

sprung up and writhing like fronds of sea anemones

swayed by a fierce tide.

Tonight when the wind is blown away down river

I’ll sleep in faded cool pyjamas and a soft shirt left

by an old lover,

the memory of his breath,  wind through the heart-harp strings.

Sap tears of the vine near the clothes line drip

through the Spring night beneath a waning crescent moon.