M.E. Gibson

After Making Love, I Climb Beinn Dorain

Ordnance Survey map 377.
Midge spray, boots. I go
first along the burn, then bog,
then rocky ascent,
and push up through boulder fields
to the airy ridge

 

cliff on one side, scree on the other.

 

Below two ravens ride the updraft,
change places, play
in the currents. I watch their sleek
black grace until earth-bound balance
fails. I sit hard, back to a rock,
stopped a hundred meters from the summit

 

as once before when I was caught
on a ferris wheel in high wind,
as once before when I was caught
at the top of a swing’s arc
at the moment momentum slowed
and the chain slacked

 

and the fall began.

 

News, Belated

October 17

 

Sorry, the friend wrote,
I didn’t tell you
he was dying—since you’d been
out of touch, not getting along.

 

What politesse, I thought.
Just say abandoned,
cut off. Just say,
estranged.

 

No one, knowing the end
was coming, saved me
from blundering

 

into the online obituary.
At this distance I can’t tell
indifference from cruelty.

 

No use shouting
by email, poor self.
Don’t reply, press delete.

 

October 24

 

For comfort I bake bread,
make soup, but instead

 

feel you, lover, putting your hand
over mine, curling my fingers
on the kitchen knife.
Like this, you said,
work from a steady wrist.

 

You had unrolled your traveling kit
in that temporary kitchen
and showed me each blade
like an old friend. I can’t remember
what you fed me

 

and, as always, I ignored
your too quick goodbye,
the flick of premonition
when you closed the taxi door.

 

So now it’s ended:
scalpels
fruitless sutures,
brutal salvation
that neither cures nor kills.

 

October 31

 

Between first and second sleep,
before I remember the dead
are dead, I see you retreating

 

in a blue hospital gown
at the end of a long corridor.
Where green walls give way to water

 

you’re swimming, your left hand
clutches the IV pole, your right,
sculling for dear life, beats air.

 

Atque in perpetuum

Catullus 101

Even at the end you pushed
me away, didn’t want,
didn’t care, couldn’t bear
to see me again
though I am certain,
if anything’s certain, I visited

 

your dreams and likely
I showed up the same way
you’ve come to me since.
Coitus interruptus,
as real as daylight but fleeting.
Dream boy, you’ve left me

 

no way to tell your hail
from your farewell.