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.

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