PDF

The Green Eyed Lady in the Glass Café


by Iain James Robb


 

Is this sought sea dream of the Arctic fox?  The green below the circles

of the white, above her eyes?  On Formica

tables where the woman smocks beneath

glass borders of their vacant smiles, they pass

by windows formulating styles,

that last year's ermine seasons elongate

in memory still into instants: they teach not

each others' known and bland apologies

to her at least, below the shadow

of a fractured lover's new repair.

 

It is not the way of things, apologies

are miles contracting and expending

not for her, who sought no marriage gladly.

Still the glass eyed lady by the Formica

drinks milkshakes and remembers when the glass was fit,

to view her, now it has become too late…

 

but apathy is not another's mirror,

if her sea-vair eyes not yet the face of hate.

Endcap