incident

i look across the table and think
(fiery with love)
ask me, go on, ask me
to do something impossible,
something freakishly useless,
something unimaginable and intimable

like making a finger break into blossom
or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes
or remembering tomorrow.

i will you to ask it.
but all you say is
will you give me a cigarette?
and i smile and,
returning to the marvellous world
of possibility,
i give you one
with a hand that trembles
with a human trembling.



[norman maccaig]