Relocate

After eight, the city is made
of some dark and arid crystal,
an amethyst drought to
dry your lips and tongue
and make a moonscape
of your eyes.

The sky’s too polluted for the stars –
we put them into the neon
and the broken glass.

I am not used to the heavens being
so close to hand or so cutting to my
soft bare skin.
I am used to skies like oceans,
and oceans as black and vast as night.

Sometimes, but not always,
fingers twitch
for the sweet wet cold
of a harbour town,
where the silos range white and
ugly like whalebone against the
slap and sigh of sea,

where my father goes walking
by the train tracks, by the wild and
bleeding berries,
an old black dog for the shadow
at his feet.
The rain so soft and damp in the
rough curve of his collar,
the mud so thick on his heavy boots.

His eyes so clouded and so bright.

I would like to be recreated,
and made anew
by the tar black novae
and the Midas gold
of this urban night,

except that there is a little girl
who does not understand
why this is happening
to her.

She is waiting back home for me,
watching the waves with our hazel eyes;

our hair is wet
and our legs are cold

and our lips still taste of salt.