PIPEDREAMS

You were a diminutive form among the sprawling ferns
between Peggy's house and the tennis courts
that aren't there now, all aglow with puppy love.

The Down has altered drastically: our woods replaced by houses
and Wilson's store is now a private dwelling. Painful nostalgia
yanks me back to '69, with exquisite delusions

of being thirteen again and us being together
and carefree: me choking on a stolen cigarette
while you fumble in vain with the catch on my bra.

Oh how grown-up we felt then, our adventure just beginning.
Hard smack back to earth. Reality check:
a drugs overdose claimed your life in spring nineteen-eighty.

But in my inner Headley, you've never really left me. We
are still together. The old houses and dirt roads
surround us like a comforting blanket

wrapped around us in childhood: that precious,
precious sense of safety and nurture
that prompts joyous laughter on sunny days,

while idling on Ludshott Common and watching
the bees collecting pollen, as we peruse our joint future:
our wedding, a home, four children...

aah, such rapturous pipedreams!