Intruder

                                          Photo: courtesy of Peter Moore

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