First It Is Taken Away from Me

And now I am home again.

I can sit out in my pyjama bottoms,

two cats sprawled

belly-down on the warm deckboards

to converse with

the Saturday after Father’s Day.

The air is saturated with moisture

as a rum cake is with rum.

Like a tourist, like a slow boater,

like a firefly past the solstice,

I hover and scull and wobble

through these haunts and currents and air-pockets—

the day’s emptiness

radiant in the hollow of my spine.