Lost earrings,
a dash of acrid green
in the wrong time of the year.
How can they have ripened
in the irreflecting night,
they died so thin and hawk-coloured,
like matching clouds, one drying rapidly,
one completely dry.
One letter's opening endearment,
like August's, only gentler,
slips a transparent skin
over the eye just awake
Autumn had left uncored,
as when you put down with the telephone
the whole Atlantic.
