To Be Still

We once danced in that bandstand 

by the park, not minding the chill.

Autumn leaves swept at 

our feet as we stepped

here

and there

and the fog of our breaths mixed

with the incandescence of streetlights.

Your hair glowed in the dark as

it whirled and like a puppeteer

and its puppet,

you twirled from the strings of my arms

lost in the music of the moment,

and I watched the step of our shoes,

one two,

one two three,

afraid to be lost

in the pace of you.

You took hold of my face to gaze with two indigo blues and said:

’it’s okay to be lost

it’s okay to forget

it’s okay to be still’,

and I knew those words to be true.

To be gospel.

We unfurled in that bandstand

by the park and were lost.

We forgot and were still

until the rain clouds filled

and poured free. Heading home,

we ran with

the laughter that lovers laugh,

we danced on the sidewalks

the way lovers dance.

I spun you from my arms with no thread or 

string to hold you and watched you

pirouette in puddles and gutters,

one two,

one two three,

the wide road a stage to be lost in.

I watched you unfurl in the chill of

the rain and in the ghostly

glow of headlights from

a passing car as they poured

over and through you and

you broke the way

a lover breaks,

and you forgot

and went

still.