Bournemouth Hotel Morning

When wallpaper
Is stuck to the ceiling
Is it ceiling paper?
The gaps where it’s unglued
Catch the dark

You tap out Morse
On your Blackberry
I listen to the whistle in my ears
Fragments of traffic
Rustle of starched white sheet
Pad of your feet
Your cough and spit into the bowl
Electronic hums
Click of light switch
Clump of distant door
Indeterminate shuffling
Someone seeking breakfast, maybe?
Turning page
In the Labour party
Conference Guide
Soft scratch
Of this uni-ball eye
Manufactured by
The Mitsubishi pencil Company

Creak of bones

Fjords

What are you dreaming?
Your hot hand
Rests on the fold
Between my stomach and chest

Are you still in the fjords?
Adrift in Flam
On the deep, deep waters
Below the silent mountains
Watching for absent birds
Listening to the thin waterfall
That jogs down the slopes of the moon?

Or in the Domkirke,
The Stavanger cathedral,
Where the august chill of Christmas
Spreads through the dark, ornate carved frames
Of skulls and saints
And bare-skinned angels
Sat upon grey-green stone
Like candlesmoke
Where the man cleans the candleholders
and sweeps the wooden floor
of candle shavings
with his red brush and pan
In the manner of a Viking