HALF-HITCH

A harbour in spring. Nice weather time.

Love takes to the air like a gull.

Beneath a tarpaulin sky,

cranes unload cargo like the hand of God

managing the world’s chequing account.

A coroner fingers a gut’s undigested bits.

At the stump of the dock a tourist centre

spills out another historical re-enactment –

this time, with feeling.


Fog squeezes between my chest’s anvil

and the afternoon hammering down.

Once lodged in a body a bullet can drift for years.

You said you’d be here. Clinically speaking,

at least one of us is breathless.