Till I looked at you

"Oh yes, it's yours", they said, "we were about to leave" giving us the bench - you smiled cutely
like a Jedi placing thought in others -
we sat and talked in that London square, high
gate to your soul, and the late
autumn evening sun crowded you -
I thought love was caverns -
I gave you my straw hat, and its shade
made a tracery across your eyes
as you took me to the 'naughty' niches
of your soul and told me of the
things you'd done - but I felt nothing
as I lost myself in the chestnut glow
in each basking pool of your eyes where angel motes,
crystal white, seemed to fly and the skin sheen -
another time, your temper flared, another time
traces of anger and hurt smouldered, like a comet
across the sky, but I felt nothing -
I thought love was holes, with tight seams you sidle through,
where you lose the air as you dive into black water - till ...
- I felt this simple glow when, out
of the blue, you just texted "Hallooooo!", and,
foolishly, one day later,
when I texted back a gentle "Boo!" -
but there is something I still don't understand,
like a climber clinging on to old and anxious
ways, 'why me?' 'why, ON EARTH, me?' -
and I've lost the feather they gave me
to remind me of that time you picked a feather,
"that's a good one" saying, from the ground
and placed it in the flowing, in-flowing, curving, in-curving
of the soft braiding of the dark lush
of your hair