To Be Young and in Love in Middle Ireland

The girl from the satellite

town holds berries in the fast stream

supermarket queue.

She carries her longing like a stream of song,

her melody

a body over the boundary

of what is solid and what flows.

The guys in the depression-

hit town are tripping in the fruit

aisle. Falling for her

berry lightness they slip out

from their outlines. One guy says

she takes the form of a dream,

or the dream of a form.

On the page of the regional

night berries

pulse like the notes of a song

in the stream. The girl

who sheds the skin of her longing

escapes into more

longing.

In a dream on the margins

of town one of the guys

hears a girl sing, her voice

like strings,

a basket of ripe berries

floating into the night

on a stream.

The girl, the guy, in derelict

bedrooms hear lucent songs

undressing,

streaming from their outlines

through the boundaries

of town wrapping around them

the scent of fresh berries.

And I was the guy and the girl

was within

the page of the town

ever, over, after, never, the song

long, long, long, long.

The stream is slipped as the ground

you stand on.

Build houses out of song.

The berries are undressing.

The stream is long, gone, long.

The girl dreams a form of dream,

or forms a dream of form:

the boundaries of song in the night

undressed as a stream in the morning.