That long drive through the cold,
Climbing from your car, and trudging over
gravel towards the empty pub
In the centre of a darkness of the sky
and land, with a forest in back.

Sitting close to fire, anonymous in black glass,
Light reflecting in your eyes from flames I could not see,
Your green eyes like stone kissed by fire,
In which I saw an entire being,
The working of a new way,
salvation like music, a blue to set against the night,
A sky of light, and meaning against the darkness
And blood thirst of fate.
I held your hand, even though you had refused,
Because you knew, somewhere, that it would
Never happen, and my thoughts, no matter how
Strewn with stars, would never hold the sense of life passing
Before my eyes, the idea of time that your eyes, your presence,
The thing I had built around you, could destroy.

And you were what I had searched for ,
You were the world passing from my eyes,
You were the summer burned dark in the sea,
You were the spirit telling me I was closer,
Than I had ever been, to love,
And I stood, and we were alone in the Falcon.

And how I had dreamed of a place and time
Like that,
Of being instantly in the dream
Like notes of music
Drifting into symphony,
And we drank one drink,
And left, and it was cold outside.

That was how it could have been.
We could have always had that sense of living outside,
Of speed against the land,
Of being forever and forever with one another
In a changed world;
Where even the barmaid’s ginger hair,
The heat at my back,
The smell of forest,
The relief of the chef at not having to cook,
Seems like the word.

The word of goodness,
of purpose springing from
The stages of the sands.
That we could not hold,
Needing, as we did, to breathe.