To Nancy

Now you are leaving the homes of the neighbourhood
wrought with familiar windows and doors
that suddenly, jewel-like, lie down the long evening

and leaving the street-names of Merton, Dundonald
and Avebury, cipher-names hundreding memory,
rallying time that was good – now in store –

and years have a holly-leaf prickle as love goes
somehow to strangers – and friends, young and older,
holding forth somewhere, in this or that town.