Elemental Poem by Tony Jolley

An Espace with space to spare
Skidded and skitted slowly
Round our snow-cosseted corner,
Retreating from view.
Retreating with you.

Six seats empty -
Room enough for another
Swedish forest of furniture
From IKEA Fribourg -
Yet full to the gunwales
With my world:
The warmth of you,
The want of you:
The wonder of you.
A world the entire Earth couldn’t contain
Between its Big Bang beginning and its final fiery curtain;
A world within a world
Yet beyond the bounds of East and West:
An elemental identity Mendeleev never mapped
And neither Magellen nor Cook ever charted.

My world is in her classroom now,
Playing large upon the stage of her life
And I wonder whether there might just be
Another living soul there alive to see
The glory my heart finds in she.