Portraiture

It is true if I could I would claim you through time

circle your coiled hair and patent smile

did the photographer pose

or you just know

how to swan your neck and hide your pain

in thrice mended sweater a size too small

our boiled wool and best kept stockings

sweating out youth

if now you lived I’d show you what came after

austerity and lit eyes of hazel

wishing into the future

is it better now? or then when

the greatest harm an unmarried pin

sticking your freedom to the quick

you laced yourself in and breathed out

coal dust and fisherman’s hands

chaffed and reddened by toil

ancestors enriching highland soil

would we have been friends?

my lack of Godhead your penchant

for John Bunion and his sermon

who can say? only the field mouse’

small and mauve in death

brought in by cat laid carefully by farm-house mat

beyond a sewing room where you cobbled looks from Paris

on muslin form, breathing life

I was clumsy and wide waisted in compare

climbing trees watching for the worm

as magpie attracted to beauty

is not capable of wearing his fine theft

he is a creature of the outdoors

looking in from cleft of oak

like I summon you through time

spend a moment here

lend me strength

show me how

you endured the fallow path and

hard winter of turning twenty

as light leaches from heathered hills

and tired men return for their supper

only the fair-headed girl lingers

until last golden arc presses against

violet hour and she too must

return her gaze to humbler pasture