Love Poem

Love is a new city
Walked through street by street
Love is holding hands
Love is aching feet
A new city is uncertain routes
Unhealthy foods, unempty
Seats. A new city is seeing
New things well after you’re
Totally trashed and beat.
Love is knowing home is in
Cities old and new when
The journey home is always
Far, and 19 years too few.

For GP

Remember that night or was it early morn;
Remember how late it was, fourteen years ago?

The North Star hidden, it was too near dawn;
How hard to recreate  it was, fourteen years ago?

Twenty ninth of April, nineteen ninety nine,
What a random date that was, fourteen years ago.

Not chosen by pundits, consecrated by wine,
Stars in love with fate it was, fourteen years ago.

My distant country, my alien name,
What an odd choice of mate I was, fourteen years ago.

You had no money, no job, no prospect of fame,
I saw only how fortunate I was, fourteen years ago.

I don’t feel very different but gawds how thin I was!
Was it youth or the salads I ate?  (it was fourteen years ago!)

Not our quiet church wedding – but colour without pause;
A celebration consummate it was, fourteen years ago.

There were no other homes here, no weddings took place
We never thought  how desolate it was, fourteen years ago.

We never thought of nations, nor religions nor race,
Only how appropriate it was, fourteen years ago.

For me, who argued every step, Who could never stop thinking things through,
What a declaration, an end to debate it was, fourteen years ago.

Now eternity shines in the girls, in afternoons, in words, in you;
Infinity through an open gate it was, fourteen years ago.

Just An Old Fashioned Love Song

Did he get you roses, my mother
In law asked. No, I said but
We had a clandestine lunch.
Romantic dinner? Enquired
Random family. Well, I said,
Maybe after the movie, the kids
Will want pizza. I don’t have
A gift for you, I said. He said
There was nothing he wanted.
18 years. A marriage come of age.
When talk around the table
Can take you back two decades
And each memory is sharp
Enough to cut through the years.
When every morning begun
Seals the vow of each day done
The roses are in the sun’s
Rise and set, and we know
That we are but young in love yet.