First Love Poem

Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words,

as close to my lips as lipstick, I speak your name,

after a silence of years, into the pillow, and the power

of your name brings me here to the window, naked,

to say it again to a garden shaking with light.

This was a child's love, and yet I clench my eyes

till the pictures return, unfocused at first, then

almost clear, an old film played at a slow speed.

All day I will glimpse it, in windows of changing sky,

in mirrors, my lover's eyes, wherever you are.



And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely

the size of a tear. Tonight, a love-letter out of a dream

stammers itself in my heart. Such faithfulness.

You smile in my head on the last evening. Unseen

flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air.

Poet Unknown