Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Should anybody ask me how we met I’ll read them

Ansel Adams on photography and say it’s in

the way the artist brings out of the landscape

what the frame brings out of the painting.

Which is to say you bring out the best in me,

but not the way the Maillard reaction

brings out the best in food through the combination

of amino acids, reducing sugars and heat.

It’s more the way the right wine brings out the right light

and the scene reflected in your eye places me

front and centre, peering in, trying to describe the colour.

It’s what the singer does between the words

that makes the words the words and not just words.

The way the crows that currant-stud the risen green

don’t startle as I cycle through and crunch the gears.

Distracted weavers weave their hair into the tapestry,

a knight which leapt six hours ago makes sense now.

The way the symphony opens up only when you know

what’s coming next, your place in it and why (or not).

The way the past’s not even past and looking back

I overlooked the beauty of the worst of it.

The exam flunked, the form misfiled, the blown bulb

and the curtain drawn which caused the bar’s inviting glow.

This way that led with more coincidence and happenstance

than a minor Victorian novel and yet with the absolute

conviction of its binding, and with gratitude, to you.