Too far too fast

How do you do that?

How do you,
with no more than a fingertip,
change me from someone too languid and indolent to move
into a body
focused and shaking with desire?
How do you do that?

How do you take me hovering
to the brink,
and keep me there
like an improbable kestrel
in the shimmering air?
And tease me,
taunt me,
torment me,
before bringing me, speechless and gasping,
to the newly-created stillness
of the other side of the lightening storm?

How do you do that?

How do you, patiently, gently, laughingly
wait
while my mind comes slowly back,
and after-tremors shake me once or twice?

And finally, when I can talk again,
how do you look at me so deeply
as I look into your eyes
and see the pleasure there
and find enough power of speech to ask you
"How do you do that?"

12^th November 2002

Dangerously Free

I fear for you, my dear.
You aren't good at taking these things lightly, are you?
You fall asleep, and wake to dreams of me.

The man on the bus says,
"I dream of playing cricket".
"Mmm", his wife agrees.

You are a good, kind man;
a funny, surprising, sexy man.
You intrigue my body,
and seduce my mind.
But...

But I fear for you, my dear.
I cannot give you
what you want to give to me.
And maybe I represent freedom.
And you, my dear, aren't free.

"She can't go on",
says the man on the bus.
"She'll end up on her own",
his wife agrees.

But that's ok. I've been alone a while.
I like your company,
and although you intrigue my body and seduce my mind,
I am, at heart,
dangerously free.

16^th November 2002

Star-crossed love

When I was young
I was in love with Orion.
(Those broad shoulders,
that tapering waist,
- an obvious choice for a romantic school girl,
but after all,
we are all of us made of stars.)

And last night I stared
at a dark and flaming sky
which held no other stars I recognised,
and Orion stood upside-down,
holding stars I had never seen before,
and for the first time
I saw that Betelgeuse
burns red.

And we talked,
you and I,
our voices bouncing as radio waves,
and electricity, and light
around the planet.

So I stood looking at Orion,
talking to you,
and I asked you to watch for him,
and think of me.

I slept in the night,
sweating in the heat,
and dreaming.
And this morning I woke,
kicking the sheets in the daylight,
to answer the ringing phone,

as you stood alone,
in the freezing air of the Northlands,
under a clear and crystal sky,
drunk on the vision of a million stars,
looking at Orion,
and talking to me.

10^th December 2002

Bitter-sweet dreams

I want to reach inside my dream
and pluck you into
the waking world.

I want to talk with you,
touch you,
spend time with you,
here in the waking world.

But I wake up.
And the dream
(which was sharper than my memories)
fractures and slides away.

And I am left
knowing that you are in the waking world.
But not with me.

10^th December 2002

Equilibrium

I've let you take away my equilibrium
and with it's gone my balance, ease, and peace of mind.
My thoughts are restless, fidgety, and meddlesome.
I listen for the phone, and then I'm disinclined
to talk, and disappointed it's not you who's rung.
Where I was whole, my heart's boundaries are redefined.

And when, one time in ten, it's you who rings, I find
I've let you take away my equilibrium.
More than talk, I want our bodies recombined
in wordless heat. You touch me, and I'm undone
where I was whole. My heart's boundaries are redefined
by your attention. Without it, what have I become?

I was like a cat, self-contained and venturesome,
amused by the world, but then our thoughts intertwined:
I've let you take away my equilibrium.
Where I was whole, my heart's boundaries are redefined.
Now like a dog I'm hopeful, begging, and confined
by my assumptions and fear of being troublesome.

Awake, alone, I remember our breath combined
in breathless closeness as I was overcome
where I was whole. My heart's boundaries are redefined.
I've let you take away my equilibrium.
There's a twist on that old adage, 'love is blind':
you are all I see, I'm silenced, deaf and dumb.

I am in pieces now; my peace is gone. Undone
where I was whole: my heart's boundaries are redefined
by where you are. When I'm with you I have a modicum
of happiness, and it's partly 'cause you're kind
I've let you take away my equilibrium.
The thing is you love me, and in that way, spellbind.

Where I was whole, my heart's boundaries are redefined
by my desires. I want you so much I'm numb.
I need to stop and pause, and then rewind:
I need to be myself again, and shine among
the stars with my own true light: entire and unconfined.

I've let you take away my equilibrium.

March 2003

The moated grange

Do you know how hard it is for me to know,
when the phone rings,
that it won't be you?

Do you know how pointless it is
to check my email,
because there won't be one from you?

I imagine you with your family,
packing the days with laughter and with fun,
and not missing me at all
while I pine,
like Mariana,
pathos personified.

Or do you feel the same way?
Do you wish I had not said
'no calls, no emails, while you are there'?

Do you laugh with your family in the sun,
and miss me inside?

(As I miss you inside,
at night, in the dark,
but that's another story).

Note: Mariana of the Moated Grange became a symbol of pathetic, passive and unrequited love from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. She has the bad taste to be in love with Angelo, who ignores her, and she spends most of the play fading away for love of him.

14^th April 2003

The dance of the river

You encompass me.
Your mind surrounds and interleaves with mine.

Your thoughts dance with mine:
intertwining and flowing,
like the water,
like the riverbanks,
the water shaping the land
which guides the water
which shapes the land.

And together we are the river
which flows through the landscape -
forming the landscape -
as we journey,
two and one,
towards the sea.

14^th April 2003

Silences

I lie awake listening to the sounds of the city
thinking of the silences we've shared.

The great, dark silence of the north,
surrounding the candlelight and the firelight,
and the flames of our desire.

The ancient silence of the high chalk Downs,
with the wind blowing the sky clear above us as we walked,
and you let me think my own thoughts,
helping me over the stiles.

The warm silence of the kitchen while you worked,
tapping your thoughts into reality
and I read,
passing you chocolates,
our supper bubbling gently on the stove.

And the enforced silence of circumstance
as I think of you waking up
half a world away,
with so much that's unsayable and unsaid;
and I lie awake in the dark
listening to the sounds of the city.

14^th April 2003

Departures

My arms are around you
when you murmur 'I love you'
and gently pull backwards:
and kissing,
we part.

I offer you breakfast
and put on my bath-robe,
boiling water for coffee:
and eating,
we part.

You rinse off our shared passion,
getting dressed in the bathroom,
your trousers, your t-shirt:
and dressing
we part.

We gather our things up
start packing our cases:
your hair-brush, my toothpaste:
and packing,
we part.

We wait at the bus-stop,
checking the times out
and buying the tickets:
and waiting,
we part.

And then from the station
I go to the airport,
you're catching the next train:
and parting,
we part.

28^th April 2003

Appreciation

I lie with his arms around me
relaxed in the afterglow:
and sometimes I think of the women
it�s obvious he used to know.

It takes an amount of practice
to learn to do a thing well
the apprentice becomes a journeyman
before he can master his skill.

Filled with a sense of well-being,
I�m one of a sisterhood
of sated and satisfied women
who taught him to be so good.

I owe you a debt, my sisters,
one I can hardly repay,
but thinking of you, I thank you
for pleasures I feel today.

16^th May 2003

Just looking

For a moment
I see you as others see you,
a tall man
looking over the heads of the crowd
at the railway station,
(and, oh, the things
they do not know about you).
You are checking the people and
searching for me.

And then,
when your eyes meet mine,
we are together again,
and my moment of voyeuristic
pleasure
is over.

Do stalkers feel those moments
of private intimacy
all the time?

18^th June 2003

Travelling

I wrap myself
in the knowledge of your love.
It calms me, soothes and comforts me.
Serene and happy,
I walk taller and more freely.
I move with grace.
I smile.

When I am with you
I live within
the knowledge of your love.
It surrounds me like the air.
Like warmth in summer,
I breathe it in
and breathe it out.

At the airport
you wrap your arms around me
and enfold me
with the knowledge of your love.
I see the distance you are about to travel
reflected in your eyes
as you see it
reflected back in mine.

Later,
beset with doubts and hopes and fears
vexed by confusion,
sleepless in the night,
I defy time and distance
and wrap the quilt around me
to draw comfort
from the knowledge of your love.

17^th July 2003

The price

Pain is a price we pay for joy,
and learning is the fruit of pain.
But wisdom has a heavy cost:
I cannot be a fool again.

If I throw tantrums, I am lost;
the sound and fury fill the air.
ranting may feel good inside,
but the message is that I don't care.

Wisdom grants a smoother ride,
but sometimes I just want to shout,
play dangerous games, confuse, be coy,
and let my inner bitch come out.

Such self-indulgence would destroy
the joy and learning I've attained.
Though wisdom has a heavy cost:
I cannot be a fool again.

17^th July 2003

Marvels of the modern age

We've world enough, my Love, but time
runs short, and that's the crime.
Our love has always been expressed
by north and south, by east and west.
It deepened, plumbed new reservoirs
under Australian desert stars,
and blazed out fiery, clear and bright
in the frozen northern night.

But we are more often far apart
and distance tears the wounded heart.
So are we mutual �migr�s?
Is this the pattern of our days?
My life and work both tie me fast,
our future's hostage to my past.
Your duty means you can't forego
the Baltic archipelago.
So is there any likelihood
we'll take our loving in full flood?
For love eternal is a lie
and everything that's born must die.
Must we run the course apart,
not share the journeys of the heart,
while at our backs we always hear
time's wing�d chariot hurrying near...?

You have your world, and I have mine
and rarely can they intertwine.
For distance, duty, care and love
threaten us, and place above
such intermittent links as these
a powerful sword of Damocles.
I don't demand the greater part
of the countries of your heart.
So surely we can find a way
to pay the dues we each must pay,
that we might build a time and space
where we may love, without disgrace.

10^th August 2003

Mutatis mutandis

I sit beneath the thunderstorm
high on the edge of the escarpment,
where the view stretches thirty miles to the north
and forty to the west,
enjoying the heat of the sun on my back
as the hills disappear behind rain.

Thunder rolls among the clouds.
Beneath them, starlings wheel and turn in the valley
and nearby, the swifts dart over the turf
snatching insects from the warmth of the air.

The weather comes in from the west:
bands of sunlight and shadow overplaying the landscape.
The cathedral is hard to pick out in the darkness
but the sun shines bright on the plumes of dust,
rising in the wake of the cars on the unmade road,
as it shone
bright on the plumes of dust
rising in the wake of Cromwell's army
marching on the unmade roads.

The houses roll across the valley
in a slow tide of red and grey
which flows, but does not ebb.

Above me, the storm finally covers the sun
and rain crashes down on my complacency:
heavy drops, laced with ice,
straight from the cold heart of the thunder clouds.

I walk and then run towards shelter
and watch the road flow with the swift water,
the limestone flooding off the hill-sides
into the valley below.

Winter is half a day nearer.
Hailstones bruise the blackberries
while the cathederal shines bright in the sunlight
which glints off the windscreens of cars,
as it glinted on the centurions' breastplates
while the Britons sat high on the hill-side
watching them cross the valley below.

6^th September 2003

Note: Mutatis Mutandis is Latin for "changing that which should be changed", or "making the necessary alterations".

I was privileged to have been brought up in the same place that my mother, grandmother and great grandparents were. As a result I have walked and lived in the landscape my grandparents' knew.

Fare Well

Our time has come and we must part.
Miss me softly in your heart,
so if we come to meet again,
we'll do it gently without pain.

For we have loved in many ways;
in laughing nights and heated days.
Though all things change, all seasons end,
first, last and always, I'm your friend.

5^th October 2003

All poems copyright © Beth Cargill, 2002 and 2003. All rights reserved.