Saxophone By Louise Machen

Saxophone

A saxophone is ribboning out into the orange sky
its silken refrain a resident of the thick August air:
a sombre scale to say goodbye

to life with you. Rapt by the rich reprise,
shades of bronze and gold honey the night, where
a saxophone ribbons into the orange sky.

Notes of blue and the hum of traffic collide:
a serenade to the fading light. A practice of prayer.
A sombre scale to say goodbye

to life without love. To life without life. 
A life without care, a life without your fingers in my hair
and the saxophone ribbons out into the orange sky

for a life that’s gone, for a life that died
and the fact of aloneness lays itself bare.
A sombre scale to say goodbye

to the shape of you against my side
to the way your lips would visit mine and dare.
A saxophone is ribboning out into the orange sky – 
the sombre scale of a sad goodbye.

Louise Machen is a Mancunian poet and a graduate of The Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. Her poetry likes to explore relationships through the use of narrative and sensory detail and has appeared in Agenda and Black and Blue.