London

After that single fact of life, a death,

what was left was not so much a void

as that which in my London childhood

we’d call a bombsite—desolate but rife

with memory and desire, fertile earth

beneath, a place where something would unfold,

something hard would turn to something good

some dormant thing would wake and sprout new growth.

And thus it was.  Just past the London Eye,

a bright September day, the river’s edge,

with crowds of people milling all around,

walking and talking and standing still—and I,

reaching the meeting point under the bridge

and finding you, my lover and my friend.