Valentine’s Poem
| In honour of Valentine’s Day, here’s a poem of my own – written a few years ago, for my husband. |
A Long Time Later
(Around 3500BC, the world’s oldest extant love poem was inscribed in cuneiform on a clay tablet)
After thirty-two years
of consensual activities, it seems like
it’s all been said. And done, in the centuries
and similes since the priestess wooed Shu-Sin. After all,
our love affair required no pomegranates, asps or abdications.
No stars were involved, except the ones
we ignored that first night
in the Botanical Gardens.
We did the usual –
made love in single beds, restaurant bathrooms,
a Combi van somewhere
on the Massif Central,
grew gardens and children:
more prose than poetry.
I might try, at the end of a day,
when the dogs hear your car and
rush to the door,
to reach for a figurative flourish,
for my own way of saying
You have captivated me
but, after all this time and distance
that we daily cross,
I have only
my own tired language
and your kiss.