Your Memory
When evening trickled inside my tent
the sun had already turned into an orange flame
perishing behind the slopes of Craignure.
I poured some kerosene onto the coal and made a fire.
Blue flames leaped into the black haze of nightfall.
Near the camp, I lit a candle and covered it
with a slender open glass.
On the other side of the hill the lake opened
like a mirror unveiled after a vigil.
At midnight, I woke up to a sound and thought I heard
your voice. I lit the hurricane lamp and stepped outside.
The darkness and the lake had become inseparable.
Just the sound of water lapping gently on the rocks
and the wind in the trees.
***
Love
The old mahogany chair sits near the window
As you left it; its hand-rest still hollowed
With the weight of your elbow. And as the evening wind
pushes little clouds of mist into our garden,
a heaviness stays. I remember those occasions
when we did not speak; sometimes for a whole day
and then another. Slowly longings would build up,
a strange desperation pressing on every inch of my body.
And then, we would speak again, such heavy words
Would queue at the back of my tongue.
It's just two days since you left. My heart squirms
each moment I think of you. In the evening,
your blue nightie hung on the clothesline sways gently
as the wind fills up the hollow you have left forever. It swells
afloat, rises and falls back again, straightening its lacy folds.
Today, I have left the doors and the windows open.
Come home tonight and touch me.
Just like this wind that touches everything.