Ago

 

Ago

 

And she says to him:

why I did not meet you

thirty years ago?

 

He scratches his chin,

or would do, if that were the sort of thing

he was likely to.

 

Her daily complaints

are only smiles in rain

her time span varies but the conceit remains –

you’ll often see them,

gossiping, window shopping,

holding hands,

she says this, he understands

and it’s all quite natural -

they’re shocked

to discover they still can laugh a lot.

 

Later, he’s left, perplexed,

with a box housing Schrödinger’s cat,

or something like that,

amused in half frustration

at her many world’s interpretation,

remembers a low budget film,

to do with tube trains

slicing her worlds in two

where the one left stranded is you,

feeling the tugging of cosmic strings,

on his heart.

 

Of course, they’re apart -

this happens you know?

And some say that absence makes blood flow,

watering feelings that grow

like feathered nests of stinging nettles,

blooming into thorny thickets

that are hard to disentangle from her hair:

the burrs detach and stick there.

 

Her short steps often aching

to keep up with his longer limbs,

a frog’s chorus shamed by sweet songs she sings,

and how she plucks at his bass strings,

puts puckered lips on hobbled things,

to cook with all the thick syrup it brings,

from sweet bananas grown in Philippines,

and she tells him that it sucks -

 

Because, if Time could bear

her nips and tucks,

He would have set this bearing years ago,

and gazed upon her compass rose

to note how it might have fruited –

instead of grooming trees for shedded leaves

and drilling loam with barren seeds.

 

Still, she says, let’s smile:

Bless in gratitude each rising sun

that through each universe has spun,

and bless those days

that are yet to come.