Notes from Henry Street Poem by Eva Bourke

with apologies to Montale

Gales that played wild and loose all night
with rubbish in the street and flung plastic
forks like confetti round the garden have died
away to the hum of Astras and Toyotas on wet tarmac.
There are worm-eaten floorboards in my room
and from the kitchen comes the smell of burning
toast. Non-stop rain blows in from the sea
along this street of Club Paradiso, sex shop
plus blackjack club, drifts past FOR SALE signs, past
the latest apartment block's rain-black walls,
silvering my window with salt,
and I write to you from this remote table,
the cubicle, the satellite thrown into space -
and the silent TV, the fireplace
with its dusting of ashes, the veins
of slug slime and mold are the setting
which soon you will be coming home
to. These days as I invent the narrative
of my life are full of bluster and no chance
of an escape to gentler zones in sight.
Your photo's on my wall - your smile lights
up my room. It's bucketing from here to Fan