For Lovers Only

When we lay there
you stretched out and long,
me, pulling back
cautious with hope and daring,
two ghosts of someone
else's idea of love
swept through the
French countryside in
black and white.
You were a dream I had had.
Then you showed me
what your eye had seen,
when you, alone,
walked through city streets
before we'd ever met. You said
you'd covered yourself with
music and thus I conjured you
at once, quiet and apart,
and loved you more.
Projected out, many years
hence, there you were
before your death,
a very old man and
there I was
kneeling at your
side, watching you go.
I created the moment. All
your photographs appeared
in procession and swept
one by one through
your memory where you were
once again the one who
stood, mute with beauty,
ears full of sound, far from death.
Every tenderness of life
belonged to you.  Never go,
my heart breaking for a
future loss.