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Sunday 27 April 2014

Ode to recurrent reunions

Three minutes is a long time
a long time to be away from new love
six weeks was a century of distance;
our love was just one year old
and made of longing and cloud-burst
hard gravel rush
and fluttering trepidation
reunion was blood-rush
and schoolboy hesitation:
had distance and time carved out
remembrance, deadened love?

She was in bed
wrapped in her little girl world,
but eyed curtain edge at sound
sat up with the broadest smile
heart and arms leapt
for embrace
and kisses gathered
from the monsoon of waiting
swept over corporeal barricades.

Our love is now ten years old
and our waiting is framed
by known patterns of dislocation;
we don’t wait on one another
our love is used to other worlds
that encroach and rob
give in the parsimony of routine,
but there was a late night arrival
as hesitant and desirous as that morning
from that time of greater innocence –
she lay in bed
in her storybook world
working out the plots and plans
of this moment and tomorrows
where I may or may not figure,
she had to turn on footsteps heard
there was glitter in eye
and that smile that has not aged
and love gushed
not in embrace or kiss
but a heartbeat-bleed
and tears that were fought back
for decencies agreed upon.

Our love is old now. 
It will grow older still;
but the girl of one-year love
and the girl of ten-year knowing
will smile that smile
reach out and touch
without a word,
and I
mendicant of mercies undeserved
will pray
that love will revisit
in poetry and rain
in volumes I am too poor to give.