Losing It
You think I shout like this at losing you?
It’s that I’m losing you to him: as dogs
Divide the manger, men divide the spoils.
You wouldn’t want me on my own tonight.
I’ll get some sleep now; wake me in the Spring.
But teach me not to dream – I’d give my pride
For that, or else let me wake up with you.
You wouldn’t want me on my own tonight.
This morning, my thoughts are better-behaved:
A heap of watermelons in the shade.
At night, they hang on the beams and the walls
Creak and bulge with the weight of many years.
And if the sentence “I don’t love him” brings
One pleasure, there are things still unresolved.
Looking For It
Maybe it’s because you’re new:
I make an effort not to say I love you,
And it hangs in the air,
And since it’s there, it could be true.
I know this: there are times it isn’t.
But even then, the taste of it is present.
The word seeps into birthday cards and tapes,
And other people’s poems suggest themselves.
There’s pleasing coincidence in the shapes
Of things: they almost ask to be held.
Finding It Again
This afternoon we’ll pick our blanket up
And run without our socks on down the bank.
I’m closing on you like a baby’s fist
And running deeper down a tunnel-cave
Away from daylight, nearer to your eye
(I’m far too close to see the other one).
This dive’s so bright and cold it can’t be planned –
It mustn’t be, or else I’ll lose my nerve –
And now the eye is all I see and now
I can’t see anything except the sky.
poems by Tommy Herbert 