Nine Lives
Warning: this is my longest poem (so far).
I would spend nine lives with you,
All nine, my dear—
No less.
Each of the nine,
Our tails entwined—
We’ll live through every mess.
“We’ve lived a few already”
Some may think of life in fact,
But I don’t think so dear,
I don’t—
As I think life has Acts.
We have nine lives,
Their Acts,
Whatever their amount;
And frankly dear—
More days than I can count.
But no,
I think that’s wrong.
There’s days and Acts and lives.
And endless as they are,
They keep on rushing by my eyes.
The Harder days,
The “toughies”
“roughies”;
Some might say.
As these pass by I breathe my sighs,
And walk down better ways.
But they still pass,
And as they do,
The good ones come,
As wont to do.
The Good days come,
They stay a while,
I savour while they last,
But dear – my Dear,
They leave as well,
As I walk briefly past.
And as the days soar by,
The Good, the Harder ones, the rest.
I realise my dear,
With you—
That they’re all the best.
And as Life I, Act I concludes,
I wait in earnest
as the next Act preludes.
But Life I, Act I has long since past.
It lasted long, but didn’t last.
I didn’t know you then,
My dear.
Strangers still we were,
No me there, nor you here.
Act II passed swiftly by,
As childhood’s rainbow arches
Still lanced the ocean sky.
Act Three then came,
And Four and Five.
We both had our struggles,
We both stayed alive.
And through it all the stage was moving,
Actors dancing,
Passing through.
For both the stage was changing,
Background,
Foreground,
Players,
Play.
As Act and Act passed through we also,
Changed and shifted,
Changed again.
The changes hurt,
The changes helped,
They do both now,
They did both then.
Some Acts were gentler than others,
Others spared no hurt’s expense,
But all in all they built to this—
Brought us both here—
In a sense.
And then it happened.
Just, one day.
We found ourselves,
And lost the page.
This wasn’t mine,
That wasn’t yours.
A foreign background
Foreground,
Players,
Play.
We oriented,
Looked,
And learned.
And many different things we earned.
And finally,
Back,
And forth,
And blundering;
We figured out,
As we were wondering—
We figured out the game.
The Acts were unfamiliar!
Those weren’t our Actors!
Not our Stage!
We’d both done it,
We’d both walked,
Out of ours,
Onto another Stage.
And now my dear,
We’ve found ourselves—
Each other—
And a Stage.
A Stage to share,
A Stage for two.
A Stage for all we need.
For all we need a Stage to be,
Is in each others’ Play.
So now, my dear,
You understand.
Our Lives have Acts as well.
And now you’ve wandered into mine,
And into yours I fell.
And don’t forget – there’s Acts to come.
And Lives on top of those.
And once all Nine are up my dear,
Well,
We’ll just see.
Who knows?
