Rendezvous with Unknown

Cut-price sun. Bank Holiday
in the Public Gardens. Every green
is a bulb, spiderwebbed with filament.
The light between leaves
too easily mistaken
for the morse-flash of lenses.

The fountain is a mossy, black candle
rising from its pool.
Water sparks off its stone,
polluting any long-range picture
with white dwarves.
You linger where the snare of splashes
chews voices
in the ears of hidden microphones,

and watch fish carousel
through a grimy Milky Way,
larger things still, ploughing
beneath them. Giant salamanders,
half-subterranean.
Amphibious watchmen.

Your shoulder is touched,
perhaps by the fountain's spatter,
but more likely - yes,

the girl from the salon,
her lips reminding you
of the red slingbacks
that turned up last week in your wardrobe.