Stephen Yeo
… right ear cocked,
same-side eye not quite looking
as a tentative bird approaches another
he pecks for the quick
of silence.
Garden gravel, limpid puddle
to weekly meeting, where
Friends sit, four square
– a tight, unbroken ocean –
making love, from nothing.
They look, he sees
not at each other’s eyes, but with.
Around such a well
everyone equal
through lens and iris to pupil.
Old buckets on worn-out velvet ropes
go much too deep.
Lids close.
Within such waters, ear lobes
look like fins.
Him, him, It, us, us
she…
but when is we?
Leonard? Anna?
A guide-dog
slurps his water.
Two clicks.
The thermostat at last, or
was it the electric clock?
Ecstatic rummaging,
deep inside a leather bag
someone touching keys, then coins?
India-paper pages
leafed through
crackle like straw, catching fire.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 524 • December 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers