Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.
Rope
Sometimes in the small hours
alone now in my too big bed,
I close my eyes and remember
how we made love, you
entering me from behind
as my hands
disappeared in front
of me in a whiteness of pillows,
like a child’s buried deep in
a new drift of snow, and
my hair, a dark wave, falling
across the beach of my back,
and how you grabbed it,
the whole length and hank
of it, into a rope so my head
was pulled back, my face tilted
upwards like the carved
figure on the prow of a ship
where the wind and salt spray
stung my bare skin,
and how, sometimes, then,
I imagined, years hence,
that you would twine the now
silver-streaked coil, hauling
me in across deep water,
as a fisherman draws in his small
craft to land a shimmering
catch on the stone quay,
slipping the wet rope in a figure
of eight through the heavy
metal ring in a double hitch,
as if securing me fast,
as if never wanting to let me go.
from Ghost Station (Salt, 2004), © Sue Hubbard 2004, used by permission of the author