I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured
a peninsula, wide enough
for a couple of ladderback chairs
to wobble on at high tide.

I thought of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin, looped
in a cat’s cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun.

I planned to wait till the waves had bored
themselves to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles,
growing worried in the hush, had paddled off in tiny coracles,
till those restless birds, your actor’s hands,
had dropped slack into your lap,
until you’d turned, at last, to me.

When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant
skies all empty aching blue.
I meant years. I meant all of them with you.