where justice seemed weakness, divisive not uniting,
though the fact matter is
each other but remaining in our own valleys .
We were not unaffected I wasn't neither I think were you.
Once more, for perhaps the fifth time in our lives
we geared into each other going together apart,
your broken scythe
hip-bones walking within me .
Then, distance, and the mountain ridge whose snow
hung from two dry hips.
Nowadays, wiping the window, I see Paris :
it has cost so much money to be peaceful
and this peace can be robbed from me
if someone within me moves against me far off.
Thank God you are no stasis, no far ridge,
but have broken down into the potential of kindness,
never more separate, you never younger,
now so much is asked of you continually,
you in the marshlands of our middle-age,
me, wiping Paris windows, seeing again mountains.
Alison Fell
CORNFIELD WITH SKYLARK
Close up. Coins
stirred in the wet
of a cafe table
