(In memory of Deborah
Aubrey-Smith 1950-70)
Have I become you:
– walking naked from the sea,
to roll in beach sand:
the feel of it, gritty,
sandpaper skin at sunrise,
sodden in the fresh, orange,
sweaty, humid tinge of a new day.
Drenched by the touch of it.
Or have you become me:
– tucked on a bike, clinging,
like a Koala to the last tree:
the pulsating power of it, surging,
faster and faster, swerving
through wind, flogging our lives
to the edge of our skins.
The palpable flavour of it now
as I sag into middle age: You
never grew old, who died young,
But I have the salt of us,
like blood under my tongue,
I taste you still.