Lady Harpsichord

This is the way I think of you:
robin-song soft and sweet,
a breath of fresh air, and a handful or two
of red and white seed.

Written after Frances, my first girlfriend, decided it wasn’t on. There’s a story behind the title: I was staying with a college friend and at dinner his father asked me to recite one of my poems. I offered the above regretting I had no title for it. Next morning at breakfast he said he’d dreamt a title, ‘Lady Harpsichord’. I think of the event almost as a poem in itself.