City Lovers

City Lovers

Every meeting seems a sort of miracle
They cannot bear to think about, as if
To think of it could only work them ill
In future when their arms must fall away
And each turn to his mortal prosody,
The muted happenstance of day-to-day.

Half in, half out of time love guarantees
Safe conduct for them as they venture out
Among the whistling knife-edged certainties,
Their vulnerability in times apart
Becomes unfailing talisman to these
Jaywalkers in the main street of the heart.

So in the lyric moments when they meet
Neither will give utterance to that care
Which is their fond familiar, the discreet
Unanswerable ghost they can't dismiss,
Who comforts and distracts them everywhere
And is their blindfold reason when they kiss.

-----Bruce Dawe