Walking behind you – your chignon, your tanned
forearms, your calves, your white, pleated skirt
swaying, just the suggestion of that
bottom – into a sunlit pub on
Wenlock Edge for gin and orange and a pint;
watching Macbeth through inexorable
drizzle in a Shropshire market town –
‘It will be rain tonight’. ‘Let it come down’;
drying off in another pub, hearing
someone recite Housman loudly:
‘When smoke stood up from Ludlow…;’
driving home, your sleeping head on my shoulder,
your future already in my hands – nearly
two generations ago.
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