6.

The fen stretches out like prairie, the canals

And dikes are more linear than love,

The geometry of desire would shame

The poet into exile, love far

From empire. The cathedral surveys

The land, once a lake, and you look over

The pasture and see something else. You record

Your own lines: your toes feel the mud, the wind

Cooling them from the scorch of day. What

I cannot see grows each day, shadows extend

On the faces we pass. The small of your back

Moves like a wave and gathers its own

Invisible shore. We walk where boats once fled

Armies chasing the death of time like love itself.