Vigil

 

Now you are gone
your small perfections inveigle me:
curve of your eye-lid closed in sleep
widens to my horizon.

Sleepless
I used to watch those pupils move,
shifting deltas of blue veins,
blindly scanning my face.

Some nights I came near,
my lips in touch
with your pulsing lids
to catch the drift of your dream.

from Edge to Edge: New and Selected Poems (Anvil, 1996), copyright © Peter Dale 1996, used by permission of the author and Anvil Press Poetry Ltd.

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