When my girl and her friend walk away from me
at the swimming pool, I see her friend’s
sweet stick legs, thin as

Backwards and upside down in the twilight, that
woman on all fours, her head
dangling and suffused, her lean

At the end of two months’ holiday there came a night
When I lay awake and the seas’ distant fretless scansion
By imagination scourged rose to a fight

And here I am wondering about a simple hesitation in  your ankles,
an unruly lock, a cracked note.
I explore your landscapes—estranged bride,