Better late than never

Anniversary

We float free of tangled moonlit landscapes

pillowy empty word balloons

with matching tails

gauzy satellites, our shadows

a feint crinkled smudge   

to soothe an August garden of bedclothes

heavy with bellies ripe on the vine

pale twining legs twitching

with misfired current

taking a moment

to undo bedeviling knots

cinched in a long days confinement.

The nine year old inside of me

never tires

of a convulsive dance

before the faulty mirror

all hen house elbows and knocking knees

tongue out for balance

chock-a-block at the sink

while you check your hair out of habit

only half expecting

to see monkey see monkey do

then it’s down the stairs

eight at a time

for a peek in the fridge

clucking at the teeming veldt on top

the rigging of corner cobwebs

making a mental note

nagging grain of sand

to irritate the oyster of a new day.

I need eight letters

for a thing of beauty

straight man

delivering my lines

from the bare stage of the unfinished

Times crossword.

Yourwife, you say

darling, delivered deadpan

to the ping of a wink with a tang

sharp enough

to drive me to my knees 

begging for another

twenty-five years. 

One turn through the house

then it’s back up to bed

tracked by the dog

through the cracked dawn of one eye

two bendy brass horns

nestling down into notched velvet cases

last notes of the nocturne

burning off in the flare

of another morning. 

.