If we’d met in the street

I wouldn’t have known you;

thirty years have bearded

your chin and filled your face

and haunt your eyes with tales

you bring back from the sea

of serpents and monsters.

But you throw me a line,

which I catch and loop

through a ring on the dock,

and which sings and dances

in the space between us,

as, together, we pull

the boat to its mooring.