Before we swim

Here's a favourite verse by Michael Symmons Roberts, as taken from the pictured 2016 Selected Poems:


Last Things

Before we swim, your earrings
are the last things to be taken off,
like rare shells turned for centuries
by hands beneath the waves.

On heaps of clothes their clasps
could catch birds as they catch the light,
could tempt, hook and reel them in
from sand-bars and islets.

With two lobe-holes like birthmarks,
you are open to the water's touch,
though salt will try to heal you
of this greater nakedness.

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Michael Symmons Roberts (1963 - )

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