Learning to Love in Logie

I am in Logie, learning to love,
feet in a council flat, etc.
What gets me is the details, reaching out
like infantile fingers, cars with fingers!
Shelves and gardens, rubbish bags, abandoned buggies..

I am in a bay window, learning to love,
learning that love's no talent, no skill;
requires what sad wrecks trump trump past without:
an effort of will. I have a beach on my window-sill.

One night, 'round about nine, I let a decorator in
my 1st floor window. He'd hung there long minutes,
knocking, spider-like on the drain-pipe.
I let him tumble in my bay and teach me about love.

A sun that takes all day to sail across these three panes -
fills me full up with love. This is a love with scooters in it,
tears and screams, distant hammer-drills and doors,
footsteps and machines, but still it is true love.


Cor, 1998