I want to talk to you,
just like
we did in old times
over a beer, over the background music
in which we catch ourselves smiling
at each other, shyly as children,
hormones unwilling to commit
as adults.
I want that beer to turn to three or four,
a session in a pub garden in the middle
of an Oxfordshire abyss or quiet literary desert;
let that beer sink, dregs drained
another one ready at the bar…
…I miss the gap in the silence
of comfortable reproach, when you