Cooperative         01/01/2021

This is a railway town
its city walls, a ring of rust
iron released to the green of England
nettled and abandoned

our train is hours away
a single connection of recession
hauling, empty, and implacable
the only light in misty flats

and ice that steels the stagnant
fleeting ponds of last year's rain
a sleepy, machine-made worm
of grimy yellow, crawling home

across a whitened prairie
its grasses stiffened
and fragile, papery in the cold
of January winds.

We have made ourselves alone
sole customers of oily tea
and stale biscuits, salvaged
from behind dusty, angled glass

together the subject of regret
but happy and not outside ourselves
we have no thoughts of anything
beyond a café and a locked gaze

our future is never to be together
but at this grim moment,
we are one over this greasy table
measuring each other's saccades

thinking of nothing in memorial
of children's infatuation
but the moment we were happy
and I was not the only person living.

Your tea is the first thing
I have bought for someone not myself
and the first time I love someone
unconnected.