We walk under a streetlight,
and I catch our reflection in a stranger’s house.
It is a wonder we did not frighten each other all those Sundays ago,
but our solitude had made us more wary of stepping back,
so, our stubbornness has brought us here,
giggling under a sky very far from home.
I don’t wish for more time now, I swear.
I wish for a later time:
when I have read dozens of short stories,
smiling at the thought of you;
when I re-remember your gasp and laugh,
or re-realise I enjoy the taste of tobacco on your breath.
I don’t know if this promise is for me or to you,
but I’ll say it twice, binding both of us:
I do not wish for more time now;
only, again I catch our reflection
when we pause in front of a stranger’s house
and remember more Sundays passed.
Recommendations:
(1) Francesca by Hozier. Its themes are interestingly contrary to this poem. Francesca is also the original title of this poem.
(2) A Paper on Free Verse by Robert Bridges. I mostly write in what I have always called free verse. But, as I was reworking this poem I started in August 2023, I realised I never thought about what “free” verse means. I think T.S. Eliot put it best the challenge of this undefined and subtle form that giants like Whitman and Ginsberg wrote in: “No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.” The linked essay has some discussions and critiques on free verse. It was written in the early 20th Century, and Bridges consistently says the form is in need of development. And over a century later, I can’t say if we have figured it quite out.