I have been reading John Aubrey
recently, how it was common to
see visions, apparitions
and lions wandering as lightning strikes
in the Agora- or perhaps the seasons
are out of joint-out of synch.
And anyway you didn’t phone me
at home to tell me why
you were not coming today
as you do this day every week
early really at nine thirty
unpredictable irregularity
makes me quite shirty
No text or phone call by
ten past ten and then
I hope you are quite o.k.
Some good reason you did
not arrive today.
No post either-so feeling
somewhat put out and cut off
my unconscious seems to have ploughed
you up- so as I slammed
the door- it was you I saw-
Torso emerging in a forward frozen pose-
in some limbo-like
grey or perhaps bright red-
half alive but perhaps half dead
legs concealed beneath the tiled path
for ever immobile-
I am sorry to have left you
quite like that.
i
Diego Rivera, Mexican (1886 – 1957), Dos Mujeres (Two Women), 1914, Oil on canvas, Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection: Gift of Abby Rockefeller Mauzé, New York. Public domain US, Link: 
Iwan Konstantinowitsch Aiwasowski: Eine Bucht in der Nähe Venedigs (1842) 
penwithlit 