Feb 29

Last
the book of hours
We read

With odd strains

The book I want to hear

Would be earthly read
From your lips

Someone to say I love you
In some story
Of my own

In some obscure
pension

Last the book of hell
Is this forever
waiting

No, that's not true. Not hell, but joy
at having been in your presence
for a short time, a few hours in total.
I thought love had left me behind,
that my life was to be lived out
in Eliot's coffee spoons and workdays,
in decaying while my children graze,
something left broken, just broken
a little too much, by divorce.
As with our intellectual entanglements
in this too you proved me wrong,
simply by your existence,
an existence which gifts elation.
I know it is my desire that paints
me in sorrow, my poetic
embellishments are just that.
I look back in wonder at the sheer terror
being in love with you brought me.
Somewhere in the grey fog
and depression of love having fallen
apart for me before, these words,
this gift, had faded. An in an instant
moment, walking in the woods
with you, they returned,
on a footbridge, as I turned,
and looked in your eyes.

Leslie, like a fool

I thought it was love.
Even if it wasn't, it worked.
It was, and is an is, remnants
of moments in your presence
forever changed me for the better,
and is daily seen in the way
I think and breathe and walk,
My better imagination returned
after years and years away.
I can only ever have gratitude
for you giving me back
what I thought I had lost.
This is not a poem.
Its a simple thank you,
may the last thing I see
in my minds eye be you,
and as the clay crumbles
from my hands, and as these days
of love songs fade,
may the last
I write be
Leslie.