On summer evenings
air thickens – and settles,
dust dropping onto shelves of books
silently – settles.
These evenings
lift from the pages of books,
or out of dreams.
Write your name in the dust
that blooms on a polished table,
fleet wild pollen.
Dusk’s a wide, blue table
and we’re numberless as the settling dust –
little souls, barbed like pollen
with selfish, unassuageable dreams.
from Coleshill (Random House, 2013)
