i.m. flip macarthy
my wife lay on her back in the long warm grass on the ridge beneath
the pine trees and the wind moved in the grass around her lifted her
hair slightly while she stared at the sky or occasionally lifted
her head to look at the sea after all it was one of those days
all salt sea air brimming off the warm cliffs heat was whipped off
in patches in some places we had stood there the wind
tearing your hair and i thought how incredibly beautiful you are
and how still in a giving-birth sort of way and i kissed you in the middle
of an unbelievable field
standing by the sea with fishing rod arcuate
dazzling searching in the surf
my thoughts shot out at a fish in all that thunder
in the bright brass bleeding summer flood a whisper
in the deaf toss in all that light in winter without snow
a precisely determined forest somewhere in the highlands
near a stiff creek
i climbed onto an iron sledge and skipping down the hillsides got
wedged in the sun