Bay 3

He would come to her mostly at night. Sloping down the long corridors

of white-tiled darkness. The easy smile, soft words.

A touching of hands. Close and quiet; fixed

in their yellow cone beneath the anglepoise.

Some nights her eyes were seastorms. A fury of wind

on black waves. A craze of hot, white lightning

against the pale wash of turquoise horizon;

spray droplets, moist on her face.

When the fog came down there was nothing;

a translucent haze of grey nothing.

On the blue-sky days he would study the face

for traces of her smile.

On the days when her fingertips dimpled the stiff, cotton counterpane

her eyes were cold and clear. Ice floes – and a single trail of footprints,

fading into the distance,

to somewhere far out,

beyond the snowfields.