Sebastian Schloessingk

      GUEST ON GUEST

Soon the great apes will all be eaten
by forest miners and others. Time is wind

to the meteorologist, and the future
an identified whorl. A figure-of-eight

head movement, on a railway platform
of the subcontinent, blends agreement,

caveats and transcendence (not just yes
to a cup of tea) ... It cloudily warm

enough to sit out, across a slick
West London pavement table, a friend with

fresh straggly beard said ‘letting nature take
its course’. I leant in, deducted his specs.

The table elsewhere under which, as guest
couple, my socked foot latched on her bare one

‘like a flipper’, she harked back with makings
of repugnance. Give me the woman sign - waist

and hips - alone, dazzling in the animal
kingdom. Because - baby brain size? Or

from such long lying close, in the scrub,
with man’s heavy arm of unusual

affection draped round, wearing no mean groove.