Clair de Lune
by Claire Booker

She trailed me three miles home
with her Geisha face, always one step ahead
as if drawn along like a child's balloon,

descending into the evening scent of linden,
darting to my left as if she knew
my every move. Just for kicks she scaled

tumescent cranes, glided through their box
of tricks, blew rings of softest apricot
to mask her curves, skipped a row of trees

then dropped into a bedding shop, left me
jaundiced under neon while she spilled herself
on mattresses and chaises longues.

But still she favoured me, swept back radiant
on a plane's flume and when I chose to turn away,
scurried down a side alley, re-emerged,

hanging on staves of telegraph wire: an astonished
semibreve. Every slate and puddled gutter
became her slave that night,

laid their hopeful mirrors at her feet, where she
conceived herself as peacock of a thousand
cracks of light.

She blazed so recklessly, I saw men's boot prints
studded in her flesh, and then she vanished–
drawing whole oceans from me.



 

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