All morning, I read about Christian mystics. After a long bath, I wear a caftan and silver ring. / Intolerable hours of waiting for you. I plunge my hands in ice water. // The sun is red and low when I meet you by the fountain. Houses on steep hills light up. You speak / to me with your deep voice like a man hammering in a forge. I thrill at the sound like a dog ...

Smoke softens the trees, a swift omen scented before seen. / It warps what it brings, from the sun to grief. // I stir on the stoop I rent. All around me wasps shimmy, / Orange alphabet of knives. I call them father and son ...

In the garden, my father sits in his wheelchair / garlanded by summer hibiscus / like a saint in a seventeenth-century cartouche. / A flowering wreath buzzes around his head – ...

'Having mastered the art of using magnets / in discretionary acts / like making a pencil / float above a table ...'

'The world closed in, but it was fortunate / there was her own interior to explore: / the prayer books a captain might have read / on long voyages, now small with gossamer pages ...'

Day flicks its cards, laconic. / Even in April, a flamboyance of colour: / stray perfume for the pent. Burnt leaves / drift away one by one, like concert-goers ...