Intruder
The
night the heat drove you to take
your
bed out onto the balcony
when
the wind came in off the sea
roughing
the leaves of the tamarinds,
I
didn’t follow.
Separate
we slept with nothing to soften
the
insistence of cars on the street,
and
separate we woke to the sound
of
the sun coming up over the lagoon.
A
sparrow had come in the night
and
settled as close as possible,
in
the crumple of sheet beside you
as
if she couldn’t bear to be without you.
I
watched you both
the
pulse in your neck now easy,
your
arm nesting her,
head
tucked into her breast, plump with sleep.
Sensing
my breath in the air
she
opened her wings and flew from you,
leaving
behind some soft imagining of herself
curved
and pale.
From Toil the Dark Harvest, Bradshaw Books, 2004
