From the depths of a damp October you called me daily The auburn street outside so unfamiliar That new city didn’t yet feel like home
“I just called to hear your voice and ask when you’ll come to visit?” Muted tears falling on the university payphone And the scratch of coins loading asking if I missed you
And every day, I do of course, I do Every dusk into the winter our daily phone calls It was so hard to hear those secret tears
Two months crept by and now there are other voices I could hear you smiling and it’s so good to know you’re happy new friends surrounding fewer calls, less often
And every day, I do of course, I think of you Every iced spring morning I miss your phone calls it was good to hear you happy but sad to know you no longer needed me…
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Her fingers tracing mine Lily danced me out of the garden those green eyes brimming lively with purest abandon Then barefoot on the boardwalk her summer dress riding high she leapt onto the jetty and gestured to the sky
We let our tanned legs hang below as we bottomed up the bottle the air was hot and heavy the sea around us peaceful There was lust upon our minds as a veil upon a bride the deepest searing truths politely shot between our eyes
And no man could deny us loose and open all the time our hands and fingers; wanderers tongues locked in a rhyme By the spit between those kisses our burning lips were sewn her dress was barely there my body carved from stone
With each nail driven into skin I felt a clapping thunder the temple tapestry was tearing as she pierced my thin armour A melody sung upon her voice a lyric loudly grows I’d have gladly turned my back on all that I held close
We could have traveled every sea taking turns to lead the way if only if only she’d have asked me if only I’d thought to stay…
Dusk light falling on the harbour the day became a dream with toes curled round the boards she danced me to my feet in one movement I was shirtless in another she was naked a smiling glance was shared as we leapt with fingers knitted
Our kisses painted salty lungs burning between breaths the solution we had longed for as our bodies coalesced We swam until our limbs ached then floated side by side in the moonlit wideness of her eyes; another world, I spied
I was so thirsty for the moment and drank it all too quickly my mind got blurred and cloudy my greatest drunken folly Too naive to know the value of the treasure in my grip like sand through careless fingers I stood and watched it slip
There was water on three sides and only one path back to land but somewhere on that journey I somehow lost her hand Now, I wonder if she thinks of us a moment spared for all we shared does she ever sit upon that jetty singing of a parallel despair
We could have traveled every sea wild adventure every day if only if only she’d have asked me if only I’d thought to stay
If only I’d had the wisdom to stay…
[2020]
Extra special thanks for reading, I know it’s a long one. 🙂
Laura Lee, she was my first love tangled in her parents’ bedsheets and shadows from the attic window With my army-surplus shirt slipping from her shoulders
Laura Lee, she was my first love my first taste of intimacy her loving hands upon me guiding that desire, so deftly through our discovery and naivety
Laura Lee, she was my first love our fumbled teenage kisses quickly blossomed and were washed in ever deeper waves of lust and learning a new language
Laura Lee, she was my first love she taught to me the chorus of that lover’s song she handed me the blueprints I would forever build upon
Laura Lee, she was my first love I’d ascend for hours into the bottomless darkness of her eyes and the lines of those lips her quiet radiant beauty
Laura Lee, she was my first love as I learned how two hearts will knot a little death, a birth as she sang the lover’s song deep into me
It’s a melody I’ll chase perpetually Thank you, thank you for the tune I’ve carried always with me…
That sixteen-year-old words scratched there in my diary could bring the two of us here seems almost supernatural
A spring-evening walk, so like us the us we were as teens when you were my first and still my only kiss as we walked the peaceful parks of home
Now, so many years stretch across a wide valley of unshared experience they squeal and dance between us slowly and methodically we close the gap spinning our silken bridge of words
I pull the feathers from your lungs they’re knotted and tarred dripping with the bitterness of isolation they’re catching in your throat
Your silences and the space between those words they say much more they say it all…
Your sorrow is a blanket of leaves your sorrow is blossom that falls and covers this park…
Highbury Fields disappears beneath the tears I know you cry in your silent room from your hiding place
Recently, I read again of all you gave me when the two of us were lost together so I ask myself ‘what I can do to help lift you from this place’
What can I do for you what can I give to you only my time, only my time to you the healing warmth of resuscitated friendship as we walk the adult evening through this pretty park
And you can say it all you can speak it all out loud…
We move slow in time with our slipping youth We don’t rush, no we were slow to go home
Passing the coffee shops and bars I would later make my home I couldn’t have ever known they passed by, a blur, unseen
Her hand held loose in the heat There’s no need to push things we’ve time…
Then one night on a sofa in the kitchen at my mother’s house She turned slow, smiling and said “we should”
I could have laughed I must have beamed and all at the same time I was cautious
We moved slow tip-toeing down to the car I didn’t know if I could take another one another person’s innocence away
So, I paused… and time slipped away…
In a daydream I had more recently in a bar, when I was feeling particularly old I thought back and couldn’t remember why I didn’t have her If I could do it now I would do it now
Then it hit me I was honest then I was decent O, I was a real man back then…
Leaves of brown and green watching as the fire reveals a destiny for us flames licking their lips at the change of solid and tangible into smoke On a beach of melancholy teenagers destroying themselves for something that they can’t explain or focus on the big picture that is still being drawn…
Bottles of green and brown offering their joyous and deceptive contents up ready to infiltrate our consciousness convince us that the weight has lifted a sea of liquid to baptise our brains then we dance and talk of this rebirth forgetting all about thoughts of maths or progress the new beginning we’ve been dreaming of…
Leaves of brown are falling in the sunrise but day reveals that gravity has won again our heavy heads are hard to lift now and the breaking waves outside sing loud A song of measured secrets that expose themselves a beautiful harmony of movement the moon under which we slept last night brings them to us with it’s strong will
Bottles of green bloom in the sand empty shells left behind from the war we fought the best we could all night and momentarily there was a surrender a decoy that we fell for too easily now, in the morning light, it’s obvious the horizon arcs itself out before us a new beginning comes every day a new beginning is ours every day…
The Lighthouse 