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.