Me & You, Mills & Boon
CHAPTER ONE.
We met among trees and the round familiar
walked again the lovely gullies
and all their wooded ways,
nodding at the hidden houses
where the blue sea winks at every window
and the shoestring renovators knew us,
they waved and smiled, and we’d come home
to our home‑made world.
CHAPTER TWO.
Torn apart, we met again in some iron suburb
and in the hard light of this other day
you turned to me with the lovely face, undeceived,
of the girl I married, and I heard you say,
“this isn’t us, is it? Come on, Len. Stuff it.”
And like some eager bird of hope
my heart flew south, over the politics
the ponderous ties, the diminution‑by‑numbers
of Family.
CHAPTER THREE.
I woke beside this other woman,
the older maybe wiser one,
skeptical now of me alone,
and the long slow battles began to loom
and Duty like an Englishman marched in,
and the years marched on,
but long, long I carried your words, that look ‑
I hold them still
in this unwritten book.