It was a throw-away line you said.
But then again - it wasn't. At least - I
Wasn't sure.

So I picked it up when you weren't looking
And put it in my pocket. Later,
Carefully unfolding it I thought you
Might have wanted to say more.

But now, creased with time and wondering I see
It's just a scrap. So I put it back.

But carefully -

Upon the floor.

She sits behind her screen
With few words for me, lying
Barely in her presence.
We both wait
We both hear constant wind
From massive fans some rooms away
But they have taken all the stuff
For air to ruffle – no leafy movement to distract
From thoughts of what I owe
To all not here.  
So, still this room for now -
Like a pothole, really
Where the only thing ruffled, usually, is me.
(All these tunnels look alike to some)


Now - wheeling in to shelving thick with labels.
Green gowns, short words each to each.
"Rapid induction for this one please, John."
And with a green mask and cold sharp
To the back of my left hand,
I fall back from the world into...

Gone.

You have to face it as a sin against your friend
- The easy lie. A stupid comforter - 'I was about
To stop anyway' - half way through the run.

Not true, not true. I only said it to make you
Feel better.   But neither of us did.  Panting
On the road, with the untruth between us.

Simple blessing beauty kindness
Sprinkled from on high
And welling from below
And as ordinary and lovely
As an egg cooked on a stove

Your latest lover leaves the train.
The pattern on the seat interrogates.
No answers warm now emptiness is all.

The wings of possibility are burnt
Ammonia stenches, clouds.
No taking light of eyes agreed.

The window is still there.
You always were a window-watcher, you.
Now there may be something.
Maybe something new.

It's such a pain when you lose a poem on the motorway.
Near Leicester, as I recall.
(Or not)

And it was such a good opening -

Such a line

Full of simple power - lyric heart and
Earth and you...  
But now not here
Now no more.

Like friend who died with sunken eyes
I could then just see
3 weeks ago:
A curious distance from death.

The day after I could still see him,

And in 5 years time I will again
I know.

But 3 weeks?

And yet – I fear sometimes you do not know it
And then yet – maybe in the forgiving light of some days
Of some soft evenings
You do -
When the lilt and sway of easy nothing finds balance at the heart
Of everything
And all is possible, and time is kind.


2.
And then - a 'when',and an 'if', and a shattering of hard light
through cold glass, and
Out again
To weave another self - become the one that holds the stuff of others
and does the stuff
Out there.

- No one else to cope or conquer
All the 'I's' rest on you - you cannot rest.
- In the fever of the day's words and words and words....
While you – slightly apart even here,
Strive for stillness
And the steady smiling gaze that lights up
The unspoken words
Between.

3.
The wonder of it all
Searching out and up:
With much found already
Your blood and soul knowing, moving upwards through
The memories of silly shoves of playground fears and falls
Lighting them from within.
The Opening Flower - open hands and eyes for others
Others turning to look...

Gently walking with them pacing out their lives
They touch the lilt and lift
Of you.

You will give back their profound dance to their mind and eyes.
The Peripheral Vision – the little moving light that says –
listen to me
listen to me
This is your birthright -
Quietly saying – you are all power to embrace


And part

To wander in byways for all the simple certainties of drifting in the
Now:
All there is...

Now - To reach up wide and far through the thin bars
Feeling warm rain and hope and light.
The beautiful graceful stem and leafing of the logic:
Tell me who you are.

....

Maybe,

In the end,

“Drifting is an important value”

For you

Too!



- For S.
Christmas 2008

Herding flatly in the heat of streets
They rise up
Expecting rights and comfort all around.
But there is none.

Well, as a matter of fact there is some
(Thanks to Matt Cook we can all be more honest now
In poems.  Gear-changing - so much fun)

For instance, take 1 - 4 above.  
It's about groups of people in cafes and bars
In a hot evening city.  I wasn't feeling
Like Joining In.
So,
They were all irritating gits in my eyes
All condemned therefore in writing about it.
Then and afterwards
They were sad desperate zombies, so they were
All looking for a fix of pleasure, distraction, coin
Of their toil exchanging misery for oblivion and so

Doomed
Doomed
Doomed.  

But they weren't really
Of course.

I expect many of them had a truly great time.
Staggering laughter, blow-out fun, exuberance
Of release - and dancing through the
Smoke and din and drink and clashing colours, scents.

Maybe in midst someone of special poise  
Looked felt words across that bar that
Roared and rocked them far apart.  
Then laser quiet unites:
A magic channel switching out the noise.
Later they loved.
It tasted good and lasted.

Years, children, garden, wins,
Losses, and still some Mayhem Friends -
'Remember that night, and the chap
With the crash hat
Who just stood and looked?

I wonder what happened

To him?'

'And do you think these words are meant for you?'
She nods and looks a moment far beyond the room.
'I think some may be - yes.  Not sure I want
To know'
'And how do you feel about that?'
'The words or the uncertainty?'
'Either. Both. You playing games with me?'
'Believe me - no.
But maybe words must be the only bridge
Between us now.'

She sighs. 'We go our ways, we play
Our roles and mime to expectations,
Others' and our own,  to puppet-please
Through low-lit trudging slabs of days.

But deeper common streams of time
May spring from separated human years,
Make symmetry of selves and find
A breathing river loving all our lost and found.

That we may always know.'

I was about to vouchsafe importantly at
Your meeting.

But then you spoke
In your soft accent,
Getting wrong, a preposition.

And looked at me, and smiled.

And I forgot
The lot.

And so it turns from sweet to sour
And - worse than this -
No taste at all as dry grass trodden
Brown and flat inconsequential, blown
And underfoot
As our paces walk away from each
Until the sound is gone.

Now - saved by patterns rhythms lines
And forms of seeing that can find a path
To that surprising place of rightness in
Sudden sight of you again
Across the crowded years

Where all the lost unspoken words
Can sound anew.

Dark sky reserve gives way to swathes
Of generous reds in bursting final words
Against the sky.  Multitudinous -
To overwhelm the mind with more and more
And teach us to inhale the time the day the
Lovely sway in heavenly gatherings, floating
Harvest festivals of oak and ash and beech
And dreams.  

So lift me, sing me, ease me. Let me
Lie with like of you, and
So show trust in me, my words, when I
Do not.   To say a word of truth to you
Of this day too glorious to stay
Nor - in right mind - would we wish it so:

It banishes itself from sight.  
And so will come again.

This morning's rumbling train from Heaven sent:
Now words are my salvation.

A tightness in the mind, the waist.
But also freedom of a voice to say I care.

For many faces near, but known not kin.
Their contrasts trace a line of thought
To you.

New smoothness of a plastic place
Rough words do good to shake, to shake -
And give the world a grain again.

I cannot find nor want to yet,  our
Dwelling in an archived hall of thought
However sweet.

No - I will seek for now, and to the end -
The always newfound world
Of any two that find a voice.
And meet.

We saw someone together on TV
She was called Sunny Quick.
The camera followed as she ran - so light,
She danced - down stairs.  

We both thought - but you said it -
"Good name".  And it was so exactly
Right. The thought, the pause, the
Words. So right that I knew then.

And still do

No need to read the information leaflet
Carefully before treatment can begin.
Do not use as directed if that does not
Work for you.  May be taken ****** or aurally
Or applied to any sensitive area of skin.


If side effects occur, do it even more.
These may include: mid line or end point
Rhymes, a sense of quiet elation as a rhythm
Builds.   Thrills are quite common too when
A soaring, singing line comes flying on the wind quite suddenly


From what was empty sky.  You will know
Then that the Muse is On The Wing and must take
In ever larger doses by breathing deeply of your world -
Feeling the bubbling alchemy of heart and pen..


At which point - as you'll see


It is acceptable - even recommended! - to shout a bit
And bounce around the kitchen spilling tea.

I start my day my room my world I root
Around my fumbling life for clothes for
Pen for phone, for all my pointedness.
For time. And clattering down the stairs
I clock the walls of me, my life my purpose
And toward the course the road my prize the voyage
I leave.

The cat walks slowly out of my iambic lines.
Listens to the rain.

Now distanced by two decades at least;
But still too close to call, too close to say,
In some ways - yes - too close for comfort.

You, my father. 
Every day I still remember the many 
Fathers that I knew until the end -
And still know now. 

But mostly I do not know
What really happened:
What it felt like tapping out the Morse
In the rusty tubs that formed the clanking convoys -
Some steam driven, slow, and prey to watching underwater wolves.

But a surface raider got you in the end
Sunk the boat and with it your straw hat
Now both miles deep near Africa.

And later in the crowded camp, 
Trading that jumper, knitted by your mum, for food.

But watching others fading, knowing hope had 
Fallen on the wire, before they did.

But you kept going, on through all those days
To home, to peace, another life and comfort,
With which you told yourself you ought to be content.

And in many ways you were: 
Working reading fishing tennis golf, keeping bees, carpentry 
Playing bridge 
And holidays in south coast towns,
And reciting Shakespeare right out loud

At breakfast, in the bath, on county walks,
In bed.
"Listen to this line, Jerry," And I did.

You singing half remembered silly songs while shaving 
That ended in the middle 
of a line
Then started up again and again
And drove me and Mum half mad.

But that was you.

Help me cross my poorest borders. Now
The dry white clay and sickly tufts
Of many grasses seen through dust,
As we are very soon
To know,
Are ending.

Here.  This one will do
As well as any.

As our natural state is poetry
Every single word you say or see
Can stop you. Dead.  Fingers, cursors
Hover over screens.  
Hesitant to touch the light.
The light is.
And now
You live.

Sometimes you need a poem.
Sometimes only a poem will do.
Or at least a couple of words
That hardly know each other
Dancing together
Close.
Just a few steps.

And you never know – it might build.

Hesitantly...

Has
The grey rain
Taken

The Beat
Away?


No way, No WAY, NO WAY!

Welcome. Come in.

Shall we begin?


You ask me why I'm haunted
And by what?
A good question
I will try and tell you.

Ghosts are not things of night. They live on
In abandoned margins of our own
Ancestral selves. When something that was us
Is now an entity unloved and so too dark
To live in frail modern skin.

So, lest others see, I have Shunned it -
A powerful Amish word - it is no longer me -

It is some thing I can disown, avoid
Abhor; seek safety by concealment in another's
Hurt - so I see it lurks
Out There.

- a furtive fly tip of a still breathing form abandoned
on a cold flat road far away from friends or familiar habitation

So Lest others see

- then drive away to warmth to light to reassuring
‘There there’ conversation.

But I know it never goes. It survived my hate.
And crawled away to wait.

It is still dwelling in the cold fen winter landscape
Of the mind - the soul -
As dusk invades the stillness of the barren pasture
Near that road, have grown to know that ‘distance-from’
Is no longer safety.

And the shadows change the sight of my familiar path,
To strangenesses of my own self that now
Stare back from shades. Then a sudden howling  
From a distant wood half seen against a skyline.  
It will soon be dark. And it will be uncoiling.
And I know I will not sleep.


Nothing more terrible
Nothing more true


Where neither words nor another's presence
nor priests
nor books
nor God

Can distract from or protect from

WHO IS THIS NOW WHO IS COMING?

Closer yet, and closer yet, to me.  



Good heavens. Well that was interesting
I really felt the fear creeping towards me then.
Tell me Do you think it's real?


You mean Do you think he's real?
Oh yes - he's real. He's looking at you now..

I don't yet know him well you understand.

I have discovered we were friends once in a long forgotten war.

And we have spoken well - it has been hard.
But we did not turn our eyes away this time

So I am hopeful that together -  we will be
Anew.  
So let others see: I said to him
Welcome. Come in

Shall we begin?

Looking up, I set my mind to wander
From the work in front of it towards
A deeper now.

The rain, the endless exhale of the laptop fan...
And then I touched the paper. Found a tunnel
Back to me.

You watch the words with me no longer.
They left in early sunshine
Neither of us
Wanted.

A seeing that conjures what it most desires:
A solemn gathering of words that lift
To music always waiting listening
For you.

The words are  there to find
At heart of matter in the pristine time
Our imaginations inhabit yet -

But now in recollected stillness.
As I watch you walk away and fade
Between the trees,
And tangled undergrowth of waking life.

The first thing you notice
As the clothed self starts to dissolve
Is the relaxation.
A kind of sinking into the the buoyant world
And surrender
So is in there too
But not capitulation poor and bowed
More a fizzy feel for all the
Overwhelming all
That can be
In the curve of fences
Seen from trains
And blurs of green and soft remembered walks
Of girls.

Mostly.

I have to say.

And moon and planets squirrelled through
The secret words of electrons to
The screen.


Food is all around us but we starve.

At a certain time of the evening
You glance sideways.
A golden light
Caught out of the corner of the eye
And - with a little catch of breath, see  - a vision
Of purple black cloud and foreground green lit by flames of evening
All shifting moving dancing.

To savour every single last little moment:
And in that seeing with the naked eye of the dead
To find in the tiny space between action and the smell of grass
There is some Finding that may
That may...

"Build?"

One day
Into un-possible newness and
New life.

Running round the Isle of Wight
To keep up with the boats.
- Is that all I ever do?
But rocks and lonely beach
And distances - are pilgrimage
And race with self
As much as waves and sky.

Watching the rain. Is it for the first time in my life?
Little squalls across the road.
A patch of time.
A single note
Before the glass doors open,
And in to buy.  But now, what do I need?

Poems let the cold air in.

There will still be hearths and fires and warmth

But doors swing open. Sometimes

In the night

The breath of moors and moons and birdsong blown

To distances


The exhilaration of the strange.


But out there is

But out there is…


Aligned with the deep

Loving all of

Is ness,

Being,


Worms in fields,

Larks

Planets, and


The Nothing that is worth worship


And the furthest reaches of

Of

I am.

My page days turn too quickly.
Flighty meanings - reach to catch a word.
Half seen, half felt, half heard.
But might have saved for me a bright and lovely second.

Perhaps a fleeting truth is only right
For this, our running whispering,
Grave paved life.

The brick wall.  Definition of a place
The rounded edge of each hardness is now
A letting in as well.  A happier tolerance
Of otherness outside. Almost a welcome
To my patch my place my being here
Inside.
Come inside. You other.
Come inside.

Light labour
But labour still
To crystal the words
So they, so you
Are clear lattice
Seeking nothing for themselves
Just light.  

And your slow dance
If I can see and sing it
Balanced in the air

Just so.

There will still be hearths and fires and warmth

But doors swing open. Sometimes

In the night

The breath of moors and moons and birdsong blown

To distances


The exhilaration of the strange.


But out there is

But out there is…


Aligned with the deep

Loving all of

Is ness,

Being,


Worms in fields,

Larks

Planets, and


The Nothing that is worth worship


And the furthest reaches of

Of

I am.

He dabs his pursed lips after station porridge
And looks
Sad.
A sort of kiss..

Words falter do not falter
In face of decay.

The ever changing marks
Are ever shaken

Speaking in the turmoil
Of time that always never

Slips away.

Sometimes I think that the only thing
We will take with us
Or leave behind

Is poetry.

Fragments

Of what did not make sense in life

But was beautiful.

I watched you as a drop of water run
Liquid in this bony place of stanchions
Cases, bags and hardened faces.

For a time you lasted here
Shaken by bad tempered stampings
Waitings
Delays and
Endings.

Until at last
You fell.
And rose again
As cloudy light
Enchantment for a sky we cannot see.

I scratched a living here and there
I don't know where.

And then I found a glade a space
A place

To be where thin sunlight was enough to live by.
Love by, maybe,
Sparingly.

As broken fingers moved to intertwine,

And all the days and nights were breathing
Threads of air.

But it was where

A note was sounded. Pure. Away.

So I might believe

That your haggard face in that regretful place

Was not all there was to see or say.

Roses are grey
Violets are grey
When you look at them in a certain way

It's true.


All the things I did - and could not - say
Now put aside by time, I will say now.

I finally see the multicolours of your life

Of you.

We start.
Talking
And sort of...
Running.

At the first climb
We stop, breathing
Heavily - both dead, but for a comma -
And look at concrete under our feet
and windmills turning distant on the hill.

You OK?
Yes.

Start again.
on the Way now
Hawthorn and mud beside us and new green in the fields.
Easier victories of pace and breath alongside talk.
Of Warburtons and nuts and bolts.
Getting into it now
Feeling good - seeing green, paces flow
And rocky styles and sloping fields made possible.

'To that edge?'
'OK'
- Our version of sprinting -
Across the hard ridged grass
To an upward sloping wall corner,
And now the first real pain in chest and legs.  Briefly desperate.  
But another topic turns words to distance
Along a gully and narrow treed ridge
To another climb.
Our brief paces stab the ground.
Paces
To
Keep
Going

No words now.
Nothing but
Splitting lungs.
We push unforgiving gravity
Up a turning track
Going up
Still going up and around

The agony of contrasts -
Pale glorious clouds lift late sky colours of rose and blue
- While we are slow and heavy torments of road, and stones, and bones.

Can see the lookout now at Royd
We can do it
We can.
Can I...?

*******

Christ.

Doubled up gasping clutching the wall
Try to read the tourist sign's shaking print -
- may it stop the pounding -
But hearing also that eerie sweeping close now, and the gears -
A dizzying look up at the spinning blades

Can't believe we've got this high...

But no rest - chill of early Sping
Tells us not to linger with our light going:
Shadowing will be the woods:
Drawing up dark between the trees,
And we're not there yet.

Easy now.  
"Doing OK?"
"Doing OK."
We float along high fields and farms and light and words
How many milliseconds for hot cross bun dough?
How about a Triumph Triple?
(And you can forget electric scooters in Brighouse)

While late March branches hint at leaves
In the narrow lane we half run-walk
- Across another field - and under a quietening sky
A dark downward flight through trees to tarmac, street lights and...  

The Big Finish

- Aches gone and tiring feet forgotten
In a final dash to the pub.

Briefly arching for air over the car.

"Not bad -"
"No - Not bad at all"
Whose turn is it?
(That Third Person never buys a pint)

Lager?
Yes.
Nuts?


Definitely.


*                *      ­          *


Postscript:
          -  And however long or short, I will still have run with Neil                
                                  across those sloping fields with the light
                                          and the words and the hedges -

I passed to you a magazine with
An article on Love and Loving.
'Here - look at this', was lightly said,
- With grin and irony of look -
'If you want to know about love...'

Then back to screen and papers, emails, work.

Quiet for a space in open plan humdrum.

Then looking up: your hand, the magazine.
'Yes' was all you said.

But your eyes
Were full and dark and teared in pity
For you.

For all the World.

Bubbles of talk and understanding laughter rise and fall -
A warmth of people in the orange light.
Some places lend themselves to parables,
As here - in Severn-circled Shrewsbury by night.

Present friends make links to older times;
The words that are your living to make live
Trace the sinews of their journeys to a
Younger name of where we live and love -

An Alder Hill- Place of meeting and of meaning
Under sheltering green where words and lives
Were shared. We inherit now in human glow
Of present conversation, a river's-depth of memories flowing here.

The Alder trees live on. Their ghostly roots
And branches now the passages and shuts
That tell the light-dark-light of life,
With newer voices echoing their questions, truths and fears.

And some to find a way together, whatever
Distances prevail, to meet upon a day – your day.
While still the opal swans glide silent, knowing,
On the night time shadows of the Severn.

Seeing, saying all, if only we could hear.

The shadow of action covers you
As a brightness creeps across the world.
Your hair a forgotten pointing
As the stride to battle stirs.

Not now the toys of words.
The smell of belted metal purpose
In your hand. Fly to find a man
To enter and to ****.

The green, the brown the folded
Cold of stiff cloth will warm soon
Against you. How soon cold
Again? No matter. Off you go.

The willow weeps near bedroom windows.  Bare.
The - at last - leafless branches, stripped
By crystalling North,
End in exponential curves to bisect a frozen axis.

But beyond, against the sky, though  seen
Through willow tears, there's that evergreen
We planted  twenty years ago: arms raised  in
Exuberance of immortal green - a shout and whoop
For nature's Winter fireworks 

There.

Dark lines mark the pallid page to life
And start to sing
Of glooms and brightness; heavy steps
And light.
To a final Overwhelming.

- So we talk and write of Death.

But then the wind rises. The leaves now
Lift again, though 'Sit by you sit by you'
The Death bird sings by day by night.

The words welcome the sounds,
Listening in their fields of white
- all my good shepherds -
In the high fields, lanes and valleys of my life.

I walk in from the dark and wet  
The glass door sprung to slow me.
Find a chair.
Collapse.

Am I exhausted or
Not?

I don't know.

A friend of long ago and now is dying
The shadow of his place with gulls and shops
I leave on Albert Road.  
Broken arm across his short betraying breaths
With that inevitability grin
I know so well from school and later,
As little bitter fortunes

Unfurled their flags.

I walked in through his easy door
Words floundering till whisky hits
Then:
Of course we will! Sure we will!
- We fill the months and weeks with plans
Travel to the sights he wants for him.
Boats and Locos, Houses, Friends.
The evening slews in amber liquid,
Fades in fervent words.

Morning grey.
For me the stunned drive back to work
And England's ridges higher -  home to home.

Finally Southbank - monied words.
Their voices to the ceiling reach:
A gentle civilised hubub of the saved
Bathed in culture, purpose and the careful light.

And you are back there, purposing a
Fractured night
That counts each clock chime you restored.

Oh now, by all the alleys, faces, roads
And domes of London,

Would it were not so

Not so
Not so
Not so.

There are salvations in staring at the joins in the blocks of the rocks.
Like a fire from denial too long of that crouched and smouldering
In the learnt importance of crossing roads.
Importance that will not allow a life
Afterwards
But - maybe we can say - in the midst of getting and spending
Wrench yourself away
To stand still and stare at the stones
That way sanity lies....
Far away from boredom
And fearful cold to start with
- but not boring.

And *** - what of that?
Like walking on the fell naturally grows to a run...
For fun
For more than that
Where it all Comes together?!
yes - indeed.  
Intensity of staring with eyes shut in passion
The glorious arc -  
That commands the eye away from fragile later worlds
That may or may not be...

And there is nothing wrong with Depression
Strange to say
It has its rhythms and
Almost
Its delights
Too.

Too heavy to raise your eyes
You stare at the world
Through the black bars
About four feet from you
Sloping down.

Leaves
And rain
A dark green world
But even through these tragic rimmed tunnels
That were eyes
I can see it's green
But it's hard too.
That leaf - the one with the rust on the left edge
In the rain.
I don't want it or I to move
From here.

She just could not believe that she had come
To this

                                        Again

He had  said – Come on – you used to like this
Just for me – and us – it might be good.

- Try
- Please

For me.

Yes – for him.
                                            Again.

So on this chilly day:
Awkward helmet boots and fumbly gloves.
Cold and fear and knees near ears
(The pillion's lot on sports machines.
...and he wouldn't buy the chop...)

They were off, and now she hoped that was not a pun.
She did her best not to wobble and resisted the temptation to put her feet down when they stopped. Ungainly awful Stop Wait, Jerky Action.
An old film forced to watch.  
Miserable claustrophobia in  traffic queues, between a fuel tanker and a hearse.
Hot foul breath of diesel smoke.
  
She felt sick.  
She wanted out.

[The World convulsed, dissolved reformed
Things changed for her for once
For all]



The slipstream coming off the curved bubble above the glowing clocks buffeted her head with a roaring chaos that added to wild riot.  She hooked the next gear and opened the throttle wider.   The determined act of twisting the grip brought her body lower to lie on the tank, and her heart closer to the heart of the engine's breathing fiery centre.   A green high-sided truck disappeared over her shoulder into into her past: into non-existence.  And in front she knew - a climbing curve left and a stiff side wind.   She relished the anticipation of the change, getting ready to shift her weight, her eyes burning up the road - fixing the aiming point at the apex of the bend. Now! - the bike eased off the vertical, and healed into the challenge of a new world order of curve and cross winds.    
An alliance of forces at the Edge:  United,
Poised, and aimed by thought and skill -  the creation and flex of a true sword.    

And the noise!  

The noise was an overwhelming but understood cacophony – the packed high-RPM music of the Engine - loud and hard.  
The blaring exhaust and the tyre roar and the wind...
Coming at her from the left now.  She bucked and weaved a little with road bumps and sideways forces - a muscular fish in a torrent - but these were trivial disturbances.  
Together they were the embodiment of an Act of Will and Purpose -
THIS course THIS speed.  
She wanted more.  

More power, more speed - so more lean to hold it
With now a less than perfect gear change in the mix.  
A sudden bump absorbed by the suspension, and the left hand wing mirror blazes with a shower of sparks from the grounded footpeg arcing back into the dusk.  The rear tyre briefly spins in mid air – the engine screaming to the rev limiter - and returns to tarmac with a zwip.    A rictus of mortality  and terror shudder the bike -
A whiff of Death that lets her live.
This time.

They were through the moment.  

And she had kept the throttle wide.


Courage.  

No substitute. And its sometime close friend -

Instinct.

You live by them together or not at all.  

This curve was ending, and the speed extreme
Almost – Supernatural.

Difficult to hold her head forward against
The flat of the wind's hand held up in her way:
“An end to your defiance!”  

But she was not to be turned aside.   The landscape could only be seen clearly about a mile ahead - All else was pulsing blur:  
An unwinding ribbon of dark green and blue and orange - like a star field at jump to light speed.  But the moment held forever visceral –  remembered forever.       She thought her heart would burst with the joy of being alive on this edge -  
At this time  
Of all time.  

She knew -

There would be more curves and cross-winds
But Now - she was Up Front, In Charge
and,  BY GOD she shouted with the wind
SHE WAS GOING FOR IT!

Bare pad of feet on wood - he feels her warmth
Sashay in the towelling robe to sit
Before him in her simple finery,
Hair in dripping ringlets from the shower.

Across the little kitchen table eyes
Meet and know in comfortable quiet.

The tea between them steams its blessing.

A misty world is waiting for the words
She leans and looks to know his question.  
"Diamonds, dreams, or love?" he says.

A slight incline of head and hazel eyes.
Outside the quantum dance of autumn leaves,
But here is human trust that wills
A circle round them both Forever.  

"Kindly Chinese soldiers live in Cookham"
A slim hand reaches past his cup to touch
His fingers, "Don't worry - dreams do that, My Love,
And we started/ended with the third as it should be..."
And as for diamonds - well, the day will tell!"

They look their love and rise to go their ways.

The leaves dance on.

It's the wonder of the words that dare
The world to be. Levitation of the blurring
Dance of eyes and flashing hardnesses
Of walls and trains and roads  Words must
Witness by their mutual rituals, all
The gentle glories of a touch.