Hung

By night I climb the scaffold.

Step, step, metallic uncertainty,

the slip-threat hanging, torch swaying,

an angler-fish bait hovering in the thickened air.

Its pool hits grass and rough-stoned walls.

Its pool hits slate, each square a sheaf pressed hard by time,

layering the roof, book-like, each a story in itself.

By night I settle my back on planks elevated

to greatness, a lifeboat up high,

mortar dust skimming my clothes.

Cold pins me down, bone-deep, empty.

I settle and stare, plunging deep to the world above,

the night sky a pool, a clarity hanging still,

a vertigo waiting to happen. Each star

a point of magnitude too great, too small,

to be believed. Each star caught, still,

a point in a scatter of billions, billions

of miles between us, too profound

to be likened to mundane things.

Ice-cold, they seem, remote and frozen

but each a maelstrom in itself, watching,

glitter-eyed, white-hot.

I think that making love in this

cold thin air, high up, pressed by stars,

pressed by scaffold boards powdered with mortar,

would be an explosive thing. It would

be a tumbling on the edge, quick, cold,

vital, once-in-a-lifetime. Impossible.