On the last hour
Of the last day
Of the conference
I find a way to hear and to speak
Trembling and ticcing, blurting and startling,
We have our first exchange.

She looks at me shrewdly – “It was hard for you to be here?”
“Yes.” I say with feeling
And suddenly they don’t listen because I’m armoured and brilliant
But because I’m naked and passionate.
Showing up was so hard.

Here, on the bay, afterwards,
I wake from a nap
To find the light fading
And the water calls to me, needs me to be
Out by it, watching the light fade from the sky
So I slip my velvet dress on and my woollen warm things
And go stand in it, in my little shoes,
The ones I wear because it is so very easy to slip them off
And go running over the lawn, like a child
Some things are easier to hear in clothes like this, easier to be present for with
Bare feet on grass.

The sky is a windswept fire
The ocean murmers a gentle heart beat
Grass sharp with cold dew
The stars, coming out, faintly, one by one
And I can’t help but wonder
If it is also hard
For my world to show up
Day after day, to a people too busy,
Too sick, too broken hearted to see or hear its language
If there’s some vast, subtle grief beneath the splendour
If the daisies, opening their faces to the sun and going to sleep again with the night
Close their petals with sorrow
If the crickets singing chose that deliberately wistful tune
Or the anxious dog out there in the dark, barking his incoherent warning into the shadows whenever I move
If he isn’t also crying out in a language I can barely understand,
Telling me the hour is late –
The night is vast.

The dolphins in the bay sing of love
But the dog in the night warns of loss
We have so little time left
To learn how to live.

In front of all this splendour
My hands feel so empty
I want to give something
Make something, touch something
Find some token of love and affection
To return to the world
And yet
When I open them,
The moonlight fills them
When I touch them to my face
They smell of the sea.
It is the question, and the answer both.