Divinity Road

(Redux)

Beginning at the top—where this old ring
master opens wide his kerbs like arms
inviting you to take the part-uncoiled
helter-skelter of his half-a-mile—
I felt this pull and crossed the darkened threshold.

The truth is that I hoped your parents’ place
was still along the bank of terraced houses
turning to the right like fingers round
a dimmer switch—though no such light revealed
its number to my mind. It had been years

since I last met you there and came inside
to fall against the headboard and look out
a window that was now one of a hundred
curious lanterns passing over me.
Or were those lanterns more like careless buoys

submerging me in water spiked with dreams?
(Intoxicating chills I can’t define—
uncanny as the closeness of a foreign
tongue—a sense possession by some ghost
emotion—seasons morphing all at once—)

And afternoons are fading later now,
but can’t resist the evenings any more
than we can fend off memories reborn
as though to a vendetta… Yield to them
like natives of some sunken demimonde

and tremble as they deftly lift you down.