Bon Voyage

to Meg

 

Crossing the straits is easy

As sleeping with you, my sweet:

The waves just keep slipping away

Like the bedclothes from our feet.

 

A salt moon leans to the mast,

White as your head on my arm —

I’m afraid of the lights on the sea,

I’m afraid of the calm.

 

A gull falls away in the dark,

Like your lost hand under a sheet

When hunger is deep as the ocean

And there’s no advance or retreat.

 

Drowning is easy, my darling,

As when foundering lip to lip

Horizons topple and vanish

And into your breathing I slip.

 

By Alistair Te Ariki Campbell