A Morning in Saint Helier

for Alexandrina Hemsley

Since the body left me

there have been so many sisters,

and our lives

agree our time

as we were walking

to the water, past

graves and the speaking

of how little now we say

uncountable love

in laughter and war

flowers

were the pressure.

And on, into the waves,

the minute

and what passes, as violence to see

into the swell like a chain

to an anchor, that you’re here

in our stones

they are the stars aboard the moon.

And at this empty little depth charge

where the mind agrees to fall,

to feel that I may love

inside the little uncondition, or the shore

as we sway

and are captured in her current;

returning and returning and return.

Of a morning

speaking only

for herself.