A selfish grief

The light today is Atlantic.

It pares the horizontals

and blazons backyards.

It has a sharpness

about it that refutes
the possibility of escape

into hidden garden corners.

Wherever we look,

we're exposed – at odds

with ourselves, picked out

like negatives of photographs

that one day might be developed

(although that now too is an image

which makes no sense).

Beyond the silhouette of myself,

cars gleam like beached whales

and clouds make their own shadow.

And here again I’m at another loss,

remembering a selfish grief,

the words that were said and weren’t

in a room that stinks of aftermath.

We were making apologies

to each other on the sofa

which my father’s cousin found

at least a moment’s respite on.

Outside, the gulls flexed

and then disappeared

into the bevelled blue and white

of a horizon cut along
the far edge of the sea.

Tom Phillips