joanna hope bricher

Poem to be read by candlelight

You have been writing me letters
in invisible ink

made from
the juice of lemons
I grew from pips.

I sang to them
as they grew on my windowsill – 

What could you tell me in such ink
that I don’t already know?

Conwy

(i)

is there something holier about that language
set apart for why –

this house who is numb fingers at the end,
humble palace hidden night-time among mountains

and when I awake the train is always with you.

can you hold to the sand when the time goes out –
is it the same place 6 hours hence? or 23 years grown?

can this have come from the first death of [y]our father[s],
the corners we ran to, the mists that never leave once fallen?

all the angles layered
make full spiral, a tower you cannot walk around,

long sky between stones, open river leaving
and the foundations of the last defence.

can you catch it on a broken machine, all stolen
by the ghosts before we are even asleep?

we pinpoint in smoke the place where in turns to out.
the wave turns. the land, after casting away for so long,
begins to hold.

do you remember who we saved with that vain movement: no one,
and trampled on moths, and tried to hurl our hands off our arms.

 (ii)

I have walked beside
no better pipes in the business
than these who echo last-ditch shots of cleanliness
to the grey marina
and deal the best marks to those who wait, who try,
whose eyes are open in the afternoon
who confess to the clamouring sailors
in the mind that they are already lost

in the darkness of moon trying to share the bed
with a past friend,
satellite,
moved on but didn't learn

always returning, not quite in circles, and maybe
one day
you will be old enough
and already there.