Avignon
In a car park outside a walled city
where the desert ashs tossed
and the plane trees drenched hay fever,
you told me you loved me
with an unquenched fury
all seasons ardent like hard rain on concrete,
more androgynous then
than Bob and Sara’s Chelsea rooms
our album cover by Schiele.
I ate an avocado out of the small of your back
the lemon the salt the butter
those laughing meridians transparent parchment,
trace ways of seven decades
our conclusive equations marked
by these lines of trawling bell wethers,
now fold us in place nodding off together
dreaming of the Rosetta Stone
and the mystery in new hips.
From Unstill Mosaics The Book of Love, Loss, and Longing 2019
James Walton Poetry 