Yeah Yeah Yeah

No matter what you did to her, she said,
There’s times, she said, she misses you, your face
Will pucker in her dream, and times the bed’s
Too big. Stray hairs will surface in a place
You used to leave your shoes. A certain phrase,
Some old song on the radio, a joke
You had to be there for, she said, some days
It really gets to her; the way you smoked
Or held a cup, or her, and how you woke
Up crying in the night sometimes, the way
She’d stroke and hush you back, and how you broke
Her still. All this she told me yesterday,
Then she rolled over, laughed, began to do
To me what she so rarely did with you.


Roddy Lumsden
Mischief Night: New & Selected Poems
Bloodaxe Books / Dufour Editions