I stand and admire the lines,

not always so straight.

The concrete veins through the places of old

we once walked,

through to the quagmire paths

where you first found my arm after stumbling.

The burrows, dark and secret, where lips pressed

against the soft feel of ripe naked fruit.

Canals, rivers, brooks, streams we have strolled along,

flowing the only way the valleys allow.

                                                  

I consider hidden fibre optics

allowing this generation

to be strangled by electric hands;

how you never succumbed to this,

more likely to be found unconscious,

snoring lightly, book in lap.

 

The hard blur of the horizon blinds.

I rub my eyes, see the colours

of childhood marbles smudge the sky.

 

I gaze over fields, crops planted, ordered,

some purpled with lavender,

others the rough tickle of wheat.

I walk beyond these lines to you,

across this man-made symmetry.

I watch, hesitate my approach,

surrounded by the smell of bruised apples.

You slowly pick a seeding dandelion,

stare into its Fibonaccian beauty,

then blow, asking if I love you, or not.

 

I contemplate the lines I will write

to you in reply, compose them in my mind,

thinking of some kind of flourish

to encapsulate our situation.

 

I seal the letter that evening

knowing the lines I wrote will puncture

your heart just enough to walk back through

the lines, our lines,

with no need for dandelion questions. 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Richard Nixon (Facebook: Rich Pictures)