Date line

 On Dreadnaught Walk

the box hedge smells

of piss, children

playing by the river.

You are no one’s mother

and you are running.

How many dogs today

have crossed

the meridian line?

No one has ever

loved you like

a location

London gaslit blue

by the underside

of towering cloud.

The city has doubled

down on your luck,

delivered an incompetent grope

in a Wapping alleyway.

Towers lit like lamps,

a businessman’s burning fingers

in you at Canary Wharf.

A cinematographer, a prophetic

hedge maze at Crystal Palace

you could both see over,

exit visible by the second bend.

The anxious sibling

of a famous actress.

Another, slowly going blind,

who took you to the bar

the Krays shot up.

A surgeon whose hands

would open you decisively,

in correction or want.

All simply there while the backdrop

lapped at your heart.

Another date, another line

you found yourself crossing,

committing to the tide.

You walk through churches you don’t believe in

with your body

you don't believe in.

You came back because

you had been exquisitely lonely

here, once before

and unresolved

loneliness is an unresolved

triumph, and failure

a comfort, a career

spinster under the knife

of indifferent hands.

The horrific river,

the date line,

the tidal surge.

Morgan Bach lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara / Wellington (again). She published a book of poems with VUP in 2015 and then ran away to Europe and ended up in London for five years. She keeps telling people she's wrangling a second collection, so that she will eventually do it.