Ordinary Person

If I told you that I love you

more today than I did yesterday,

would you believe me?

ardour loses its sheen,

but muted passion murmurs

until andante becomes allegro

again and bloodshot eyes sparkle

once more,

if I told you that kissing you

today tastes sweeter than it did

yesterday, would you believe me?

the point of love is to fight for it,

we’ve won wars, even a few

Cadmean victories since we

knitted our souls together,

but we won nonetheless,

there hasn’t been a day when

we haven’t feared or doubted,

our lives have taken turns

for the worse

like a car careening into

the sidewalk,

and I often think of us,

wonder if we’re fireflies in a jar –

tiny, luminous orbs,

beautiful but trapped,

destined to become dregs but

living in wilful ignorance.

What about everything we’ve built?

Will it all drift away at eventide

like a pillar of ashes, disintegrating,

swept to the four corners by the wind,

colouring verdant valleys grey

and settling everywhere and nowhere?

but then I look at you,

standing beneath the gnarled oak,

past the garden pond

with no pinkish-white diadems

resting on soft, circular, little

green cushions imploring a passerby

to find meaning and be reborn,

just brown, mossy waters

resembling mouldy cheese –

thick, veiny and malodorous,

across the broken, browning transformer

with its crisscrossing, tangled wires

doing little to sweeten the spirit

and though the bloody clouds

seem to usher in an apocalypse

reminding me that nature isn’t a goddess

of goodwill, but a demoness

of decay who stretches forth stunted,

invisible fingers as deformed

as the first five syllables of a bad

haiku, corrupting, decomposing,

I walk up to you, and as I hold

your face and pull it closer to mine,

you light up, and kissing you

tastes sweeter than it did yesterday

echoing that I love you more today

than I did yesterday.