The Hand.
Lying there, eyes closed
let your right hand float free of the duvet,
fingers pulling beyond their normal reach.
Thin, wiry, prehensile, it scales the curtains
negotiates the barely open window, feels
its way up
the slates to the ridge, abseils
down the drainpipe to grasp and probe
among the night creatures of the shrubbery.
Let it return gently, slowly, to the bed’s
warmth, clutching a fresh, pungent leaf.
*
The Eye.
Lie still, resist the dangerous
temptation to move. The eye slithers
cautiously across your cheek, along the bed,
down to the floor, across the carpet’s stubble,
through the door. Glistening in moonlight,
an unshelled
mollusc on an attenuated
umbilical cord of optic nerve. Vision
jerks like a faulty television, there’s a risk
of sudden blindness, but in the ecstasy,
the rush of seeing, this is forgotten.