as consciousness trickles in
you know it is late morning
by the warmth of the sunlight
cast across your face.

you keep your eyes closed
and cannot choose
between red and purple
to name the colour of the light
filtering through your eyelids.

listening to the breathing
of the warm presence next to you,
you keep still and pretend
they are someone else
and that there is no need to plot
their exit from your apartment.

across from hyde park, which overflows
with people rallying for the march
that in an hour will wind shouting
and drumming through empty shopping streets,

i spot you behind the banners and placards
of demonstrators streaming up william street,
you are wearing a protest t and jeans.
i run over to see if you will join us.
no, but you use my phone to locate a friend,
then we lose each other in the crowd.

and i know i am no revolutionary
as i march in the middle of the street.
around me they cry out peace slogans
while i think of you bright, smiling,
showing off the no war shirt you made
and the two perfect stains of your nipples
glowing under the fabric.

“they’re only doing it to get the oil!”
a bearded man next to me says.
i nod gravely - i believed it this morning,
but now i am possessed by a closer passion,
and, like the moon eclipsing the sun,
the significance of this protest has become
temporarily obscured.

if you could graph my mood
in the way the small drums that sit
in the white corners of art galleries
record atmospheric conditions,
you could not help but see
that during the last few months
i have grown dependent
upon our salutatory kisses.

examining a strip chart
of the swings i follow,
you could identify the spike
of our greeting that begins
another delighted plateau, and,
continuing along the strip,
on the far side of the rise,
like the edge of the world,
the plunge that starts
with our parting.

i think what is needed here,
and i am thinking of both of us
when i make this suggestion,
is that our next greeting
should not be followed
by any kind of farewell.