Kate Clanchy: Perhaps Patagonia

I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured
a peninsula, wide enough
for a couple of ladderback chairs
to wobble on at high tide. I thought

of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin, looped
in a cat’s cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun. I planned to wait

till the waves had bored themselves
to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles,
growing worried in the hush,
had paddled off in tiny coracles, till

those restless birds, your actor’s hands,
had dropped slack into your lap,
until you’d turned, at last, to me.
When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant

skies all empty aching blue. I meant
years. I meant all of them with you.

Kate Clanchy: Raspberries

The way we can’t remember heat, forget
the sweat and how we wore a weightless
shirt on chafing skin, the way we lose
the taste of raspberries, each winter; but

know at once, come sharp July, the vein
burning in the curtain, and from that light
- the block of sun on hot crushed sheets -
the blazing world we’ll walk in,

was how it was, your touch. Nor the rest,
not how we left, the drunkenness, just
your half-stifled, clumsy, frightened reach,
my uncurled hand, our fingers, meshed,

-like the first dazzled flinch from heat
or between the teeth, pips, a metal taste.

Kate Clanchy: Double Take

I imagined that you’d miss me, thought
you’d pace your hardwood floor in odd
worn socks, watch the clock sit stuck,

get late to work, type my name caps lock
press and hold shift/break, miss buses, meals
or sit with fork half-way, lost, for minutes,
hours, sleep badly, late, dream chases, shake

send fingers out to pad the pillow, find
my hollow, start awake, roll over, hug a gap,
an ache, take a walk, damp dawn, of course,
wrapped in a mac with the collar up, glimpse
a slice of face, tap a stranger’s back, draw a blank;

as I have. Each time, I run to press your face
to mine, mine, shining with imagined rain.