The road between us

No Road by Philip Larkin

"Since we agreed to let the road between us
Fall to disuse,
And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,
And turned all time’s eroding agents loose,
Silence, and space, and strangers–our neglect
Has not had much effect.

Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown;
No other change.
So clear it stands, so little overgrown,
Walking that way tonight would not seem strange,
And still would be followed. A little longer,
And time would be the stronger,

Drafting a world where no such road will run
From you to me;
To watch that world come up like a cold sun,
Rewarding others, is my liberty.
Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfillment.
Willing it, my ailment."



It was still there after all these years - the road between us - so clear, so little overgrown. Did that surprise you as it did me?Standing  at the gate, heart aching to walk it. I hadn't expected that - the pull towards you, like the roots of a parched tree to water. A world where no such road runs would be too cold. Promise me we will defy time - that it will never be the stronger.     Will we keep the road between us and hope that one day it can be followed again?

Don't know how to reach you now. Feel very far away from you and very lost. Hope you're ok. Tell me if I should stay away and I will.

Thinking out loud

I still don't know what to say. You said it's not my fault but it doesn't feel that way. I knew coming to see you would be a risk but maybe I didn't think carefully enough about the consequences for both of us. When I asked you told me you were happy most of the time. If I've pulled you away from that - I'm sorry. If we were both free things would be different  - but we're not and maybe head needs to win over heart right now. Time to write is short at the moment but I want you to know that I will always be here for you - as a friend if that's all that's possible right now - and if you were happy last week because of that then I think that's ok. You're allowed to be happy when a friend visits aren't you?

Fairy-tale Logic

Fairy-tale Logic

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe

That you have something impossible up your sleeve,

The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,

An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,

The will to do whatever must be done:

Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

by A.E Stallings

There are no impossible tasks in the fairy tale I imagine us in. I have no need of chin hairs or  dragon bone. I only ask that you believe some things last, that time doesn't diminish or erode. Remember us and the way it used to be. Hear me and know me in the silence of words unspoken and the absence of touch. No masks or invisible cloaks. Just the two of us, vulnerable and brave in that first meeting and again after so much time.

First Love

"...This was a child's love, and yet I clench my eyes
till the pictures return, unfocused at first, then
almost clear, an old film played at a slow speed.
All day I will glimpse it, in windows of changing sky,
in mirrors, my lover's eyes, wherever you are.

And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely
the size of a tear. Tonight, a love-letter out of a dream
stammers itself in my heart. Such faithfulness.
You smile in my head on the last evening. Unseen
flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air."

from "First Love" by Carol Ann Duffy

Again I feel I've said too much, too little, and nothing at all.
It all blurs as tears fall.

First love that all these years later flows back from the past to flood the present.

The sweetest, sharpest thing I have ever known...

What I wanted to tell you

"They stared at each other under the ancient sky with the soft rain and full wet earth. More than anything Ephram wanted to talk to her and tell her things he'd kept locked in the storehouse of his soul. He wanted to talk to her about the way Rupert Shankle's melons split on the vine and how honeysuckle blossoms tasted like sunlight. He wanted to tell her that he had seen a part of the night sky in her eyes and that he knew it because it lived in him as well. He wanted to tell her about the knot corded about his heart and how he needed her to loose the binding."

from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond

Letters

I will always send you letters,
folding and refolding in a million different ways,
trying to make a snowflake that won't melt in your hand.
Maybe one breezeless day I will word the question right
and your answer will find a way back against the current.