firstish

Blue wall,

cracked enamel porcelain blue

like the absence of you

a twittered Madame’s darkling hue

and inlet tides

I can’t swim through

Little though we see, much we seem to know

Of silted muddy flats, fresh covered by the snow

And soulish beauty patched deep for the fallow

Sweet remains of what can’t grow

Riddled in the blue,

The salted, pining milk-fresh white

Of winter like rags in the rape of night

Of silence like shrapnel in the mouth of night

From a drowned-almond height

Wicker bare box,

Empty on the view

Snapped, packed, winterly you

Thyme on the ridging slew

Of a blue wall