From Tears in the Fence 60

MISTER RIGHT

I do my bit with ruffled peonies,
water them right, their pink Asian tumbles,
thinking of you Bill and your deepening
into compassion, distinctly London
picked up experience, capital affairs

pulled from the West End's generic corral
of edge-walkers, what you called sensitives,
same-sex attracted, non-scene, soft movers
who came by you, we meet the ones we need,
by accident in 12 million stressed lives

surfacing out the tube atlas each day.
I never knew you get character wrong
in terms of seeing hurt as signature
to being special, like shyness rewrites
a hidden kindness, and these spilled peonies

get coaxed into pink focus by the sun.
To me, first meeting, you were Mister Right,
the city in you like an investment
in transitioning decades, earlier
we'd have been lovers, later we were friends

who loved each other, optimized shared time
through every illness driven in your cells
as undercover guerilla attack,
pushing sympathies forward— what was it
a favorite oatmeal jumper you wished back?

© Jeremy Reed 2014