No Other London

No Other London


The South Bank is clapped with moonsheen:
Delayed autumn.
The streetlights shatter like geological features
Brim-cross my wet glasses,
And perhaps yours too

Except you choose to not wear yours.
But I trust the wind to be slim-fingered,
Thin-bladed, and damp,
on two necks tonight.
The air's rough-tumble baffle
Shucks itself in puddles we prudently skirt
On opposite sides.

I think:
There is no other London.
When we meet, it is.
The river's cold iron-flow,
Banks of sky, slow-roaring, low.

We are rarely together.
I am thinking now, in hope, how
In these silken-silt deeps
Our hands could be like in cold
And ebb in caress.




This poem is thanks to Maderia, much thanks.