David Robison

Tag: love

  • My heart is not free

    Gratitude first I must show, Universe.
    She was tall, top-notch, with a feather in her hair.
    Silk gloves and feathered earrings.

    The way loose, gingery-blonde hair poured down her forehead
    was all this luckiest man could hope it to be.
    Too churlish to mention then: my heart is not free.

    The curve of her nose, her brows framed such eyes.
    We danced in a way I have never relaxed,
    arms softly draped around snug fitting backs.
    Big smiles on show for all to see,
    I knew the DJ, he smiled back to me. 
    As she pulled me gently for kiss after kiss,
    drunk with the happy, let the revellers see –
    I barely do feel it: my heart isn’t free.

    With long strides to mine, 
    she held the beauty I’d long thought,
    would never (save once) be accorded to me.
    Hand in hand, we leaned and bounded as the youngest lovers.
    Had I overlooked myself, it would be jealously.
    When she lay on my bed, on top of the rug
    “Don’t put on a shirt,” she said, “come down to me.”

    And so what if my heart is not free?
    A bird that is born for joy, 
    can yet sit in a cage and sing.
    Bright and happy – the bars are just staves for the melody.

    I listened to her heart beat in the morning,
    my ear against her breast.
    Ah d-dum, d-d-dum, ah d-dum, d-d-dum.
    And tea in bed, then coffee and
    the pastries, warmed through, were Lidl’s finest. 
    The void banished, death and aging but a dream,
    in the sweet present.  Nothing to resent. 

    And as she left, 
    I did not feel bereft.
    The leisurely day remains spread out in front of me.
    Make some jam, pet the pets, sip more tea.
    It was all this luckiest man could hope it to be.

    The notification says you’ve re-friended me.

    After closing the windows
    and closing the doors,
    only then do I pause, only then do I see:

    Till they scatter my ashes round that bench by the sea.
    My heart is still yours, my heart is not free.

    Written by

    David

  • The reservoirs will be happy

    I ruminated about us all night,
    how we would never make love again,
    with wind and water lashing the lean-to,
    and in the morning, the downpouring still is interminable.

    A whole river tips, heeding nobody.
    The sky will not lighten, and I shan’t settle.
    I must go out. I can neither stand or sit another moment.

    A coat over a coat – the rain doesn’t hurt anyway –
    it slews down my head, face and all,
    with no hair to soak, to mitigate the flood.
    Water doesn’t hurt
    though it cares for nothing, stops for nothing.

    Traipsing past the sloshing cars and down into the sodden woods,
    I pause and clock the weight and height
    of the river’s churning guts:
    the reservoirs need it.

    Then striding uphill, lopsided and urgent,
    without even a dog to justify my presence,
    I suddenly find myself where the river is flat.
    We walked here, that day in June.
    The place was incidental then.

    A summer spent on edge,
    from an anxiously hot and ruthlessly dry spring.
    No moisture sank more than a centimetre in,
    so a sludge and previously unseen,
    reddish rings came into view
    around the remaining water at Compensation Reservoir.
    Then a hosepipe ban.

    Anxiety also hardened the soil in the yard.
    Neither of our loves managed to sink in far.
    We jettisoned seeds that were fully fertile and alive
    but onto heedless earth.
    There we are.

    And you didn’t help:
    Mixed messaging, doubts, the past not letting go.
    What with human-ness, your head on my chest.
    “We are very different,” you said.
    I took that as badly as I could.

    All the while, the seeds burst from their pods, silently as we brushed our arms and legs through the sticky willow at Staithes.
    Love clung to our trouser ends and caught us like brambles.
    We carefully picked our way out of it, thinking it was some kind of inconvenience.

    A warning anxiety would not let me go.
    And by explaining it to you, thinking I could trust you,
    I wounded you.
    Again and again, we wrongly heard,
    only heard what we feared might be said,
    goodbyes that weren’t necessarily meant and so on until,
    it became an obstinately loving gesture of farewell,
    for you to make this birthday cake.

    And you had bought me an ornamental figurine
    of a man on an old fashioned bike.
    He leans forward to the woman, who tilts on tip-toes.
    She cranes up her mouth to kiss him, as far as a silhouette can.
    This was meant to be us – obvious – through happy years,
    within reach, as easily as our parents did.
    It didn’t seem right to give it to me then.

    Predictably, haplessly, with August gone.
    I long to behold these figurines
    as if they were our shadows again.

    The seeds are germinating only now,
    when September’s solitary duck
    follows me in perfect parallel –
    no faster or slower,
    and with no more sound than the ceaseless pitter patter
    on this flat part of the river.

    It needed to rain.
    It’s been so dry this year and it doesn’t hurt.
    And somewhere, beyond these dripping ferns,
    a child still laughs at play.

    My heart will not mend,
    but the water soaks into the soil at last.
    And although I couldn’t give a fuckwit’s toss,
    the reservoirs will be happy.

    Written by

    David

  • Hazel, a second

    When I looked into your eyes, I now confess –
    although aloud I asked, “Are they green, brown, hazel, blue?” –
    for a second, I thought of another woman.

    Who is this second woman?
    Who?

    Is it the girl then the woman who
    because of fear,
    I loved from afar, but never dared to draw near?

    The shiny haired girl from class
    Gillian and then Elizabeth?
    I never spoke to her.
    I was not like Jonathan, so brave and arrogant.

    So then, did I see Hattie who I loved so far
    beyond any rational measure?
    Like yours, her eyes sparkled, like treasure, in play.
    Bereft upon each homeward journey,
    for ten full years,
    when I was a child with no means, no tools and no verse.

    And Helen loved me not a jot!
    It was not of her that I thought,
    Even though on that mast
    I wilfully tore a freshly adult heart.

    So by then, fearing pain I turned away, for safety
    from all of Charlotte’s grace.
    True, there was something like this in her face.

    Now, in this second, I see this woman I have loved but never held.

    Let’s call her Hazel.
    Hazel is my idea, my life’s silent longing.
    An absence, an ache, she is self-inlaid with artistry and care.

    And yet instead of absence,
    I feel in my hand,
    your hair.

    My lips close on yours, and when,
    in a second, I open my eyes
    I see her real, alive and smiling there.

    Written by

    David

  • When Amy smiled

    The same as that little boy,
    cast again into this foaming flux
    by a tug at the chest

    (The new equilibrium is somewhere,
    maybe. But the basis upended.)

    The sitting, the breathing, the mindful teachings.
    Quite useless.

    All my stilless
    All sleep.
    All my effortful balance,
    All this hard-won peace.

    Brick by month, repairing the defences.
    The artisan repointing of the battlements
    that were so damaged
    by ill-considered alliances and dalliances.

    What is the use of
    all the patient mending?

    Every self-help verse,
    The delicate heart-to-heart surgery.
    The careful inner work.
    All my readiness, ready –

    Then, your smile
    reminded me:

    All I have to steady,
    bobs in a small paper cup,
    in the vastness of a sea.

    Written by

    David

  • In images still

    It is only a ghost that preoccupies this space.
    A curve of your hair, photographed at the mirror’s edge.

    I can own that absence in images still:
    Your hand holds a dish, or a ceramic dog,
    intuited in slips and glazes.

    Your fingers do cusp the solid ceramic, 
    but a boy’s longing swells from Autumns past –
    Forlornly there, I incanted,
    from cold steps overlooking the valley.
    Sad now, for that melancholy boy.

    On the valley’s far side, the night’s amber necklaces glowed and said nothing
    from a field of new houses, where other girls lived, 
    to whom I’ve written nothing.

    This brings up a question.

    I didn’t ask what is it,
    simply went and made that visit.

    Although I bravely drove the car,
    with you beside me, noting my inexperience,
    I was nervous and said little.

    Beyond that, we did play chess, remotely,
    exchanging messages.
    It was a comfort when I was alone in Madrid.

    And the more is in the mind, for being
    not much in the day.

    Unexpectedly, I received an urgent warning of heartbreak.
    From a genuine friend, speaking earnestly, from a true heart.
    So with sure effort, reluctant intent and new found strength,
    my jaw set by a clear and rational adult mind,
    I bedded myself onto life’s firmer path.
    True to my word, shoulders squared
    I forked away, with another’s hand and with no means back.
    And true, I gained my beloved daughters and this solid home and chair.

    So, bravely, alone once more,
    I draw courage and ask, 
    and await a reply, which time has made irrelevant.
    The autumn’s boy expects silent indifference.

    It is only a ghost that preoccupies this space.
    A curve of your hair, photographed at the mirror’s edge.

    Image: Copyright Charlotte Salt (www.instagram.com/charlotte_salt_)

    Written by

    David

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