The Infant Poem by Oliver Roberts

Now that you’re with me things have changed,
even the word ‘here’ is not the same.
Now I say it more often than I used to –
I say ‘come here’ and I kiss you,
I say ‘lie here with me’ and you do, with that fragrant silence.
Last week I had to be away from you,
when you said ‘I want you here’,
I wanted to be the shape of the word ‘here’.

There is nothing I can think of that is the same anymore.
You have scribbled on everything I know, everything I own.
Because of your eyes I see you in a sudden flash of bird,
and I recognise your laughter in the rain on my rooftop.
Even when you are next to me you are also somewhere else –
when we walk I see your smiles hiding in empty fields,
I hear your kissing voice crunching inside the gravel beneath our feet.

And now, wherever we are, you bring the wind with you;
you wear it around you like a coat and then you hold me with it.
When I say goodbye, I depart from you dressed in echoes,
while you, standing watching me, become the forest I just slept in.
Now that you’re with me things have changed –
I write now with you beneath my pen,
your being has given birth to a new poetry.
This is its first breath.