From: "Love T.K.O."

Excuses

This time of night everything
echoes like an empty biscuit tin.

Take this fratching couple
finding fresh grounds on which to quarrel;

perhaps he snaffled
the last biscuit in the barrel.

I mean it was something and nothing
but now him just coughing

sets the silence between them quaking.
Just to watch is painful.

Morbid switches flip in each’s head.
They fancy the other dead

or conclude the affair has run its course:
all marriage ends in death or divorce.

It’s not the evening they had in mind
as they set off round about opening time.

But what interests me is not why this bout
kicked off or what prolonged it but

the methods used to make it stop.
This may be a little over the top

but, stomping past a yard, last thing
someone is divesting the kitchen bin

of its Sunday Supper. The falling lid
brings her attention to the wheelie bin

and links, by sleight-of-mind association,
the chicken carcass and alienation

and becomes the final place of rest
of the many love letters he sent

while their courtship was young.
She can chuck them now it’s done.

For another half a mile disquiet
runs round her head but she doesn’t buy it:

she hates this giving in.
She’ll fetch the crumpled letters in

and with her palm iron them flat
and, sullen, feel regret that

she thought she would never need
these tributes to his need.

(This is all in her head
as they walk, and nothing is said

to him so he knows none of this).
He walks on oblivious

yet sees something similar -
the flash of a pinhole camera

in the one lit star. It means this very scene
can eventually sit between

the dream holiday in Canada
and the long weekend in Scarborough

in the photographic compendium
of his own imagination.

Everyone has their own excuses
to get back to what he or she chooses

to believe in. And if that’s love
then a garbage can can be enough

to dump you (no pun intended)
back into the centre

of that certain someone’s life.
Even the stars can be on your side

if you want them to be. For this pair
walking home, every noise or sight is theirs

to complement their own devices.
The very sky commends its stars to prise

the duo back on song.
With such light to guide them

they can bitch, bite and bark
but they can never be wrong.