I am giving you something common, unrare:
words, someone else’s, and music.
What will come, in time, is a gift. It’s yours.

Think
of his voice, surprised by this extraordinary thing:
his child’s child, knowing this part of him, printed,
delivered to you by men in nylon shirts with quiet wives
or wives who drink and shout at buses
or men with no wives at all.

Our grandfather.
His tired hands stretching for something:
his hair, or tea, or the ink infront of him.
Perhaps he turns in his chair and wonders.

Kate, you have a scar on your knee;
sudden, broken glass. In bliss I make you tell it
a hundred times,
a hundred times it’s in me:
glass, survival. You first.

Let’s go up the fields. I have a den and I have waited
long terms for you. I am trying to dig a tunnel
from here to my school, for the purposes of bombing.
I stole a pram to put the earth in,
sweated each brave shovel, waiting for you.
The barn smells old. Horses have been here.
We’ll carve our names into woodworm. Kate,

tell me why sky floats and water will not;
write me letters with curls and swerves which swoon off the page
into fuschias and eyebrows and minims. Sneak me
into a bedroom and hold my hand. The night and the dark
are ours for adventure,
Kate, adventure.