GRACE                                                                                                                                                                             

We share a long unpublished past

a few events punctuating – hardly staccato –

quiet homage paid, neither knowing

the other yearned for more.

As it was, platonic ever-absence

fought to feed that need for love

all hard hearts beat

with silent conversations, soft persuasions.

 

I sometimes sit and wonder on those years

and from a mid-love perspective

think back, forwards, over the times

we dropped anchor in our souls –

never more than the time required

to exult and then bewitch again

before weighing chains and leaving

vessel bodies bobbing on the sea.

 

Back first, then, to the start:

young teen birthday calico

brightest eyes I’d ever seen,

soft-lustred lips I did not kiss

(you wondered if I would and thought

you might like it if I did).

 

That time you took a plaything boy,

a gushy fortnight fling, I guessed.

I sat the party out, ignored, and heard

only my coward’s rage inside.

You sought my eyes and found them, saying

my growing pain was over.

 

Our bodies tried to join – confess –

in random, grid-reference, refuge-free places.

I think you knew, far better than me,

that convention was bound to fail.

What sort of siren, I asked you once;

you ripple-smiled in answer.

 

One night we met with friends. You

announced, explained, shrugged off diabetes,

damp-eyed said you’d be bigger than before

but otherwise no crisis, life went on.

I watched your mouth and, midnight, wrote to name it

Venus in the evening sky.

 

That was the last time together (I exaggerate),

forty years ago, despite your offer to entertain and

thank me properly for my well-meant paper compliment.

I never went.

I swallow hard when that truth is told

in quiet contemplation of your perfect grace –

thoughts brought on by sweet dalliance with my

woman child who shares your name.