Static

The storm shakes out its sheets

against the darkening window:

the glass flinches under thrown hail.

Unhinged, the television slips its hold,

streams into black and white

then silence, as the lines go down.

Her postcards stir on the shelf, tip over;

the lights of Calais trip out one by one.

 

He cannot tell her

how the geese scull back at twilight,

how the lighthouse walks its beam

across the trenches of the sea.

He cannot tell her how the open night

swings like a door without her,

how he is the lock

and she is the key.

 

Robin Robertson, Static

 

February 2nd 2007

 

 

Done