MORNING WALK

For Barbara

I step off the pavement

like a precipice

Engage the darting sunshafts

in a duel

In the wall’s shadow I web

my prints to pattern

The moist stone virgins.

The lawns are white-coated

their throats red

With berries and bird-song;

in petrified gardens

Hyacinth tongues lip the wall.

Leaf mould muffles my heel-taps

the enormous trees totter

In the hyaline air; I hear the

Sunday strollers in their

Mist-making walks, pressing through them

like some voiceless ghost.