Sugarsnap

Our disappearances make the best of us.
Exiting smartly like aeroplanes taking off in tandem
to inch white crosses over the stratosphere
as motorways unfurl below them

we find our beauty most fluid in opposite directions.
As the driver of a van carrying green beans,
ripening in their pods, winds down his window
to inspect the road-kill- the flat white belly of the hare

laid out like a pressed blouse over the guard-rail
seems as far away to me as we do from each other,
unsure now of even the most obvious names and numbers;
he crawls south through Hartlepool.

Love, do you remember the same things-
have you taken them with you as you have arrived afresh,
wrapped up in kitchen roll or local newspaper,
small bits of what and who we were.

Is it ever over, if I still remember
parting your hair like smoothing a bedcover
with the flat of my hand, as your chest rose imperceptibly,
and catching my own breath, I catch yours.

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