Stills

i. m. M. R.

I

The photo of you I have
by heart: you in a deckchair
casting a clear shadow
on garden flag-stones where
crab-grass has not yet pushed through.

Poised, smile faintly bewildered,
you are enduring something,
watching past my shoulder
a landscape I know well:
sea-glint, green estuary,

oxbow, a distant hill;
behind you a French window
with silvered panes, ajar
to a dark inside, where stilled
shapes are about to stir.

II

Often when I think of you
...