TWELVE TELEGRAMS TO TED

Twelve Telegrams to Ted

A bird was singing.
You studied it -
concentratedly -
going about your own business.

2

You and Seamus
sang in the front of the car
on the way to the airport:
Singing heads.

New Year's Day
on Hartland Head
we cupped the unseasonable sun
in our hands for a photograph

We lay out on the ground
for our photograph:
sardines in a tin.
When it came out
we were corpses
in a Saxon grave.

5

Lying in the sun
on the riverbank
the cows came to investigate.
A post-Plathian event.

6

When I told you that
she'd come in through her flap
looking like the victim of rape
I saw your shutter click twice.

My black cat
sat on your mat.
You called her
a hole in the carpet.

8
You drove 400 miles
to take me home
post-operatively.
It probably cost the world
a poem. I did not care.

Going to Ireland
we met Catherine Ann
and were speaking to Seamus
about Shakespeare.
She asked her father
if she knew him as well
having met quite a lot
who were famous.

When you talked
at table.
You could have made
the table talk.
It preferred to listen.

11

Of course it was partly
your father and mother.
But for you it was also
your sister and brother.

The waitress had strockings
and generous thighs.
She swished quite loudly
each she walked by

When we both said
we read out words
aloud in our heads
we looked at each other
as one might at a brother.

The stream down the lane
was lit by the moon.
I walked behind
on a stairway to heaven.

Your healer
waved his hands
at my gouty finger.
'Do you feel that heat?'
'No, just the wind.'
That cost me a fiver.

You loved to read aloud in Spanish
because it was so beautiful.
She loved to hear you read in Spanish
because it was so beautiful.