POETRY JAM - THE ORDINARY

“Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.” - John Lennon

Poetry Jam this week is all about the ordinary made into the extraordinary: “This week I want you to choose one of the ordinary things around you and write about it. Look at this ordinary thing or scene in detail and notice what is there. Is there some unexpected beauty in its design or the way it fits in with its surroundings? Perhaps by doing this you can make it something extraordinary.”

Here is my offering, an ordinary moment made extraordinary when friends finally become lovers…

A Flower in the Moonlight

We started playing with words again tonight,
While the singer articulated softly our innermost desires,
And our hearts vocalised dumbly our sweetest bitter dreams.
The room so small, the light so dim,
The night so deep, the short space between us,
So immense it could in light years be measured...

We’ve played this scene so many times before,
Two actors on the stage fumbling with props
Struggling with our lines, trying inarticulately to improvise
Forgotten speeches that we would not dare to speak
Even if we had remembered them;
Your eyes avoid mine while a flower blooms in your hand.

Above us the air’s a prism, while a hundred light-bulb stars shine on a celluloid sky:
A room with walls of music, the pasteboard moon for a ceiling.
If we could only bridge the gap between us, dissolve the ice
If you could touch me now, think of what would be gained!

You stretch your hand, as years of silence crumble
A thousand nights, dead, are resurrected
And at last, this time on cue, you offer me
A flower in the moonlight…