Wine to Pour

Wine to Pour
*






Do not hold your breath for me
Do not leave the light out.
No need to make my tea,
Or, indeed,
Pour my wine. But turn my bed down.
              I will be back.

It could be next week. It could be three and a half lifetimes from now.
or just before you know it.

Or tomorrow
Or in a fortnight
Or when this piece ends.

It could be ten years, at least, from this day.

When the record is silently drifting from one song to the next.

I might even have been back yesterday but think nothing of that.
                                  I won't explain myself either.

Upon my return
I will lay my sword
Upon your feet
    You may not recognise me.
Nor know how I like my tea, or, worse, which is to forget which wine to pour for me.

I cannot condemn you for any of this.

It was I who left your doorstep and left the door ajar.

You may have wife or a husband to lock it with you, turn your bed down for you, pour you two wine and you turn the lights out for them.

Or from this moment,

                    to my return,

      and, all the points in between,
you wait, breath bated perhaps just to flatter me.

These are possibilities.
Good luck with them. Just not all of them.

But come the day wherein I lay my sword to rest a while.
I do not expect you to know anything about me.

Or perhaps you will kiss me as willfully as the first time.
I will not know.

But I will come back
From The Dead, or, Some Other bar across town.
In a day, a week, a never or a tomorrow.
I will be back.


I will.
-None of these are promises.
Just facts; all, possible.