Girl and Dog

You do not see. You do not see

there is a part of me that is coiled up like a hidden spring,

curled up inside like a child in the dark womb that noone knows survived.

The virgin scent of you, that smell you have

That sends my heart thudding and makes my soul

swell till I think it will burst at the seams like red pomegranate

and lay open at your feet. Your hand on my head

sends shudders through me. My bones turn liquid with love.

Do you see it, in my eyes, unblinking,

My adulation? I adore you.

Do you remember when I carried you home? Soft trundle

of cotton in my arms, mushed milk and rusk,

the weight of you whipped light by night wind. In the dark your eyes were open,

uncomprehending blue, thrust from the world

you knew into a rude rush of wind, and smell and light, but you trusted me.

Without a whimper, you turned to me, blindly, lay all your faith in me.

And that night I was the old man

bringing the gypsy-child home.

Your voice, nothing special, but I hear its cracks and undulations

The sharp hiss of pain in your god-like throat

as you swallow back years of old hurt. The quaver in your song

As you hit all the right notes, but with that faintest tremor.

They will hurt you,

keep hurting you, but I, I will sit beside you in this silence

my soul in an ache

full of unbearable love

I am powerless to save you. But I will

lay my head on your scars till your old wounds heal.

The same white star on your forehead

Rises in the northern sky. In the evenings as we sit in silence

and the sea-spray blows, your breath matches mine,

And your chest heaves a sigh that was caught for an age in mine.

Sometimes as I keep my hand on your head, I feel

a tremor pass through you, a thrill. And you lean your head

on my knee, world-wise, and with those old, old eyes of yours

look deep into my soul. Do you see beneath this skin?

Into my chameleon soul.

I have seen the softer side of you, the child

who still yearns to be held.

You are not yet a woman, a kaleidescope of lost colours,

broken glass struggling to fit the pattern, sharp and bright.

But I have seen your rounded edges, the mellowness of your stomach

like new earth, the curved wing of your back as you bend

over flowers. The slip of your neck, so vulnerable,

though you try to hold it up straight as an arrow.

And despite your sharp exterior, I know you are capable

of hurting.

Sometimes I imagine you dead, for death is the last milestone.

And I think of your warm heart cold,

Those white ears folded away like handkerchiefs, the white star fading

in a distant diamond sky. For some reason as a child whenever I heard

My Bonnie, it filled me

with some unmentionable grief,

the dull, unfathomable ache of a loss I knew was coming-

And now I know it was this.

And at night I lay my head at your feet

and gaze up at you, etching you into my memory as you sleep.

And I close my eyes in the belief that if I die,

I die loving you and when I wake I would still have been loving you

in the very recesses of my infinite, dreamless sleep.