To Be Young and in Love in Middle Ireland
       

The girl from the satellite
town holds berries in the fast-stream
supermarket queue.
She carries her longing like a stream of song,
her melody
a body over the border
of what is solid and what flows.

The guys in the depression-hit
town are tripping in the fruit
aisle. Falling for her
berry lightness they slip out
from their outlines. One guy says
she takes the form of a dream
or the dream of a form.

On the page of the regional night
berries pulse
like the notes of a song
in the stream. The girl
who sheds the skin of her longing
escapes into more
longing.

In a dream on the margins
of town one of the guys
hears a girl sing, her voice
like violins,
a basket of ripe berries
floating into the night
on a stream.

Undressing, streaming
from their outlines
through the borders
of town wrapping around them
the scent of fresh berries,
the girl, the guy, in derelict
bedrooms hear lucent songs.

Fingers in dark berries,
ribbons of moonlight
flow, fall away, come along.
The girl dreams a form of dream
or forms a dream of form:
the song of the night
undressed as a stream in the morning.

Tweet

Copyright © 2021 Alan Gillis All rights reserved
from The Readiness
Wake Forest University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission