A Spring Evening in Paris with the Thieves of Love
They found each other in the good samaritan way you would try.
If you are not alluring, if you can’t get a reverie, there are other ways.
Ellen was drunk and left alone near St.Severin off the Rue de la Harpe
Where you can smell butter and garlic and mussels and iodine
From bistros open to the street. Anthony loved it that you could see that
Those bistros were happy and good. He wanted to be in one with a girl.
Ellen in mottled lamplight on the churchyard cobbles:
Freckled, brown eyed, strong in clean denim overalls and white T-shirt.
She knelt there sick and knelt also inside Anthony, in a lyric:
Not many chances like this in life. He nursed her
To her place in Billancourt. She was afraid on the Metro.
A drunken kiss of thanks at her door tastes of sickness and anise.
Of course he came back. A real man would come back for more thanks.
If it was his first chance in months.
She was brave, dramatically friendly, often in
The light that passes for candles on stage.
She had the fierce compassion that terrifies.
He had been disqualified from girls by anxiety.
They bought food, flowers and wine in the market
And walked and bought books from bouquinistes
And cooked in her room. He wrote at her table.
The white iron bed by the sunny window...
Who was this girl no older than Anthony,
Showing him friendship, making him grateful,
Showing him love,
" I like to do this,
Find one that I love, make something perfect."
Sneaky good love of stealth and cunning...
Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson
Love and artists and creativity