REVELATION

Because the text absconded
somewhere between phone and mast,
because you had no way of knowing
I'd been held up at the meeting,
you waited in vain. The train from King's Cross
arrived and departed and I wasn't on it.
I can clearly picture the scenario:
your altercation with the porter - probably loud,
describing me in detail and insisting
that he must have seen me leaving the platform
(amongst all those thousands of faces a day??).
It was ten o'clock on a Friday evening
and I appeared to have vanished from the face of the earth.
In denial of having no control over the situation -
a position wholly alien to you - you stood quite still,
stifling the urge to race off up the high street, where
you were certain I must be wandering, lost and bewildered
as I had no knowledge of Guildford whatsoever.
But you wouldn't have found me there.
I was sitting quietly, deeply immersed in a novel,
in my comfortable seat on the later train
that was just pulling into the station.
Someone had suggested I may have caught a later train. So
when I finally alighted, expecting to find you
still there waiting for me, I  was confronted instead
by a frantic whirl of activity from the far end if the station,
followed by a figure swiftly zig-zagging his way
through the flow of oncoming passengers.
Then your livid face, your furious eyes
and your harsh recriminations, "What the hell are you playing at?"
Followed by your crushing embrace,
as if I had been resurrected from the grave
when all hope, all possibility, had been lost.
Then suddenly you were laughing, tears welling up in your eyes -
although you were quick to explain them away as particles of dust.
It was so surreal.
And just behind you stood your saviour,
smiling like a small Leprechaun
to see an Englishman being so un-English:
a mass of frenzied anxiety - and you had
opened your heart to him, asking him what to do
and to help you find me -
and then to succeed in your quest, thanks to his advice.
What a revelation!!
I, who had always firmly believed
that "macho" men like you only faked love
in order to find sex, now presented
with a different truth altogether -
a truth I'd always hoped for.
Your deep concern.
Your across Guildford, fear of having lost me, dash.
And then your relief engulfing me
like a soft warm fluffy blanket;
like a mother hen's protectiveness
of her newly hatched chicks.
Such totally unexpected tenderness.
So I must mean something to you after all.
Could this really be love?
Yes, I am loved.