Her dark eyes and dark hair drew
My body to hers, although we stood in regiment
Forward facing to the band –
And only for the third time, burned
My living with a brand of love
Or let me grasp again, at least
The meaning of that ancient phrase –
From life to life; love at first touch
Though I can no more believe it, fallen
In pragmatics, as I am
Or simple shyness to the flame
Which makes us small and stays our moving
Paralyzed with lack of vision.
Betrayed by confidence, I flee – and not
By my own legs, but led on thoughtless
Stancing back to her – we leave
And I don’t speak of it til later,
In a lonely tent, now taken
With a lonely hue I had not noticed
And quickly smother my grief in sleep.
The forecast is for rain, that this poet
Would rather do poetical work
Than the real work of the leap of faith
That I won’t be laughed away by empty sheets
Of paper – at least on a good day
And try and tell of why I didn’t
Rather than rushing out to throw my life
On the pulsing rack and await reply.
Well, here’s my confession, nonetheless
Pulled in lead across the page
As I am pulled in soft self rage.
Three times say I that I’ve been cracked
Upon the rocks of the female form
The second was more slow than this,
More sparkling, more warm.
But the first is why I leave the way
Willingly whenever such grief appears
I broke myself, that time, in years
As an animal, and now I rue these days
When, chaos forged cog, I see
Another closely matching my speed
Of rotation, and am tempted to engage –
A perfect storm of human attributes
And dancing before the stage.
And instead I spin in place.
Rather than risk collision
The chancing of disaster, even if it goes our way.
(Note – The aspects of attraction aren’t all nameable, but they are all relations of one to another, which is to say ‘subjective’ or experienced. And they are not only to do with the individuality of the person but their surroundings, which is to say they infuse and are infused by their surroundings. And they are not straightforwardly physical attributes like dark hair, or dark eyes, or boxes to tick, but storms or nebulae which can centre on such things, stretched over you and the world, which are to some extent, lesser or greater, sourced from this body, not that one.)
