Truly Free

1

the sun has just dipped
into a valley of clouds
and I can't quite see
the trail, but you're with me, so I hold
you tightly as I pass the cypress trees,
indignantly holding their green
though autumn has begun to burn;
they rustle like a dawn chorus
for the early evening breeze --

the sun has slipped,
and you're cold to the touch,
when you used to be so warm,
but I still hold you tightly with me;
I smile at a memory -- it's so sudden --
brushing my cheek like rain:

                  it was years ago, we were in Hyde Park
                  listening to Eric Clapton
                  singing out Wonderful Tonight
                  when you had shone a light
                  that I had never wanted to die,
                  and Clapton had made you cry;

2

I blink back at the dying
of the light now, holding the last trinket
that doesn't look like you at all;
I try and stand where the light
is still strong, and somehow --
it's so sudden -- I hear you
calling me further on;

                  Love is a path
                  to the heart that knows its own way,
you sing to me, and I know
there is no order to love's politics,
to its creation; no discrimination
in its slaughter of reason;

I loved you, I loved you way back when -
I've loved you so many times, I know,
but each so different, like
each breath of air, or
snowflakes with patterns
that no naked eye can see;

3

or like sunlight striking
the very molecules of the atmosphere
at a frequency to make the sky blue;
or clouds filled with rain
adsorbing light to look
ominously grey from below;

                  this is the epitome of lovers' logic
                  that we believe so much
                  in what what we can't see,
                  although we paint them
                  with colours of our own,

and I think of that as I carry you
in my hands and heart,
in your cold, little home,
following the trail to the sea;

4

making my own way now
along this trail, where I know
this is where you
need to be, though
the other side seems so far to me --

and I don't know how the sea
got so wide between us,
or who burnt all our bridges
that we might have crossed,
but with all we've lost
so close to me now,
in a little white box
in my hands; I set you free:

                  it's time to go home now
I give you to the approaching night,
and I watch you,
truly, finally free
take flight like rain, and I walk back
heart as heavy as stone
but not alone, although I know
I will never find
your kind on this side again.

From the collection: "Home Alone" (Letters to B) >>

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