The Chase

The Chase

Rusted railings felt the love

heard the laughter, and the giddy footfall

of the chase

Rain has washed the sun away

that warmed their smooth brown feel

As we stood and gasped

and no-one and nothing

was more important

Later, I am scrapped railings

guarding your possessions, that

your friends entrusted to me

They are honoured guests, sacraments of my emotion

My heart, an altar,

flitted over life and land,

the shadow of a hungry ghost

In your home

a moment blazing in memory

ragas and harps

mask the ache, and

I fail to say the prayer

and ask you out

Later, thinking I'd found you,

your double danced as friends do,

when it’s plenty - but not enough

Still eluded

at the skirts of borrowed scenes

I barrowed from town to town

and left, having found no sign

Beyond you going where I’d just been…

Nothing to give but crazy love

of an abandoned hope

Not knowing what it needs, beyond

sea-grown sonnets

sung to empty seats

for journeys, never taken

and never coming home

The Chase was written late 2024 early 25. Recently edited for inclusion in A Scrapbook Of Enigma - merely an MS I've submitted for review to Ink & Ribbon publishers in America.

It is respectfully dedicated to the lass who caused it (or was that my foolish heart?). I don't know if we met at church or junior school, but I do recall finding her unutterably beautiful, in mind and body. I was in the habit of asking girls to marry me (only habitual as they kept dropping me or as it were, kid romances just fade on the wind). I decided she was the one and I must ask her. I chased her at playtimes (she was sat too far away to do aything in lesson time), and we always ended up in the lower playground near the bottom entrance of the school.  This was a railed-off area and we'd pause for breath, leaning on the rails, panting furiously. Barely would we be anything like recovered and away she'd go. And Christ, was she fast. I was never in her presence long enough.

Years went by and her elder brother had asked me to their house on some ruse or other - maybe borrowing each other's vinyl LPs. He wasn't there, but Sylvana and her mum were in. Might I just add that her doctor dad had helped save my life when I was born? I digress... Still very impressionable, I was afeared of her mum who seemed strict. I was desperate to ask her out - not her mum, silly, cracker though she were. Instead we sat and listened to Ravi Shankar, whom my dad had introduced me to years ago. Sylvana went to do something and I ended up chatting with her mum. Then it sort of got to time to go.

Many moons later, whilst in my first bedsit in Mexborough, a friend of Sylvana's asked me if I'd drop some stuff of that she'd left at her house. I often passed there going to my parents. I called in but she was either out or just going out. It all seemed too rushed to just ask her out and my courage wavered. I'd no idea where she went to socialise so couldn't track her down. It all just revived my boyhood ache. Some moons after that, her spitting image turned up at a club with her brother. I steeled myself, I would waste no more time. We danced. My heart burst and she moved in close. She shouted in my ear as one does at discos: "I'm not Sylvana". 

Long story but this other girl was Sylvana's brother's girlfriend's sister.

Toss a few more complete moon phases over the horizon and I arrive back in the UK having been in Florida - Miami Dade  - for a year. I bump into Sylvana's friend and she voluteers this info: "Sylvana has gone to live in Miami".