Leith

Blood pounds fiercely through the exile's heart.
Each oar stroke buries a rippling pool
in the placid calm of the mist shrouded firth.
Assume the royal body: dream of the waking earth.

Let me dress your famished mouth with pearls -
a queen's regalia for the junkie girl.
Your starving eyes knew the needle's famine.
Heroin and murder - be deranged with passion.

Emaciated outcasts, both, us, fleeing
from the kingdom of our youth. What act of faith,
what ineradicable hurt, could seal
the mind struck movement of your face ?

Let me witness the arc of your descension -
a star falling through a people's soul.
Psalms echoed in the gardens, reverberating, sung,
beyond life's brief interregnum.