THE PROFESSOR

Do you remember
that sunny June day, when
I had an afternoon off and
you arranged yours to
take me on a guided tour
of this delightfully
absurd place?

How it makes me smile
to picture you then,
relating it's history to me
with near manic enthusiasm.
I recall how
you paused, mid-lecture,
to gaze into my eyes.

After what seemed like
an eternity,
you asked me what I saw in you.
'I'm so very, very old ,' you said.
But I hadn't the slightest interest in,
nor understanding of, the
morally defined
mathematical equations
of physical and emotional attraction.
I was never that intelligent,
not like you.
I simply felt it.

If only you'd grasped
the uncomplicated fact
that each grey hair on your head,
every wrinkle time-etched
into your dearly loved face
fuelled such a hunger
deep inside me.
Your slightest touch
was pure ecstasy.
How dared those small minds
castigate you and denounce
our love
when it felt so right?
Just thinking of you now
brings me out in goosebumps.

But they must have been getting to you,
because doubts were beginning
to creep in.
'I'm so afraid you'll break my heart
one day,' you said, a tear
threatening to escape
from the corner of your eye.
'You'll meet someone nearer
your own age, then I'll lose you!'
But that isn't the way it happened at all, is it?
It was I who eventually lost you.



And I tried desperately hard
to strike a bargain
with the Ferryman - begged him to accept
three-quarters of my life allowance,
in order to bring us into line
and bury that wretched
fifty-year age gap,
instead of you.

But,
without a backwards glance,
he sailed slowly away
into the distance,
taking you with him.
And my heart bled to death
right there,
on that bleak shoreline.

Without you,
life has been
so dead.