I'm sharing this with The Mag. It also appears as a commercial for my collection Ancient Lights, available from Phoenicia Publishing or Amazon (US) and Amazon (UK).

It was first published in qarrtsiluni.

LINES

Straight talking,
that was what
was needed, so
you said. And

you smiled a thin
and final line,
and you turned,
as they say,

on your heel,
on a sixpence,
and you strode,
straight-limbed, along

the coastal path,
direct, unswerving,
to the jetty, walked
its slick rectangle

to where the ferry
tugged its moorings.
Just in time:
the straining lines

released, the cables
stowed, the ferry
drove a silver
track, straight as

a rail, towards
a flat horizon. And,
as I watched
unmoving, you

slipped at last
around the slow
unyielding curve
of the world.