She wants a beach house in Malibu,
a neat little place, with a calico cat
in the window bay and the breeze
coming in off the ocean, filling the curtains
she’s chosen herself, finding its way off
the Pacific as easily as the words
she taps out on the clean white page…
And you believe her, not because it
happens to be next to Rod Steiger,
(third from the end facing the beach)
but because she makes you see it,
all the way through the bar smoke
to South California, see her working
through the small hours, only stopping
to make fresh coffee, empty the trash,
or load the barrel with another leaf
of clean white paper… and writing,
writing, writing, the kind of stuff you can
show people, that makes them want
to know more, like where you come from
and who your Pop was and when’s
the best time to write… the kind of stuff
that gets you out of bars like this
and into beach houses in Malibu, cats
in calico coats and views of the ocean…
And you want to ask her, seriously
ask her, What is it that stops a person?
makes a body feel they’re living next-door
to life, like a party down the block when
all you get is the bass guitar. But you can’t,
so you buy her a drink, something tall
with a twist of lemon and a name
you’d like to forget… And you ask her
what she likes to hear, because that’s
what we talk about when we talk about love –
like where does she come from and
where the hell is that, who is her Pop
and just when is the best time to write.

Hampstead 1986