Time Travel Whilst the Kettle Is Boiling
It is late at night and the kettle is boiling,
a quire of steam fanning out in the white kitchen
you are holding me as if I were your girl again
you are speaking of how much you missed me.
Late it is to be taking the outlines from my body,
holding me in your arms in the lightness of steam
pluming from the kettle, the longing in the air
silent between us like a silver-white poniard.
The girl and the boy are in the kitchen, late.
The steam fans through the air with a lightness,
as the boundaries of longing thin about them,
and there is unspoken a question without an answer.
I have an answer to the question lately unfolding.
When I go to the wood by myself I will thin out
at the margins, threading back through the past
to the whitening kitchen and speak as the kettle boils.