Patient Place Poem by Tony Jolley

Two steps,
Three feet
And twenty-odd years
Down below these ephemeral footprints
In the surface of the sands of our time,
My fingers found the frets,
The shapes on strings,
The songs to sing
To make you mine.

From above and behind me
You denied yourself
What everyone else sought to see
And sat at an angle too extreme to the eye
Yet with perfect ‘line of sight’ to ‘me’.

Though I found myself facing the faces of friends,
I couldn’t concentrate at all on the chord runs and ends;
For I was feeling the defining moment of my life
Steal soft about my spirit in the shape of you: my wife.

I felt you walk freely in my patient place
Where the husband was waiting to be
And watched as you honoured all that you touched
With a grace meant only for me.

The world in front faded - fell silent and still
As if all creation bowed low to our will
And blessed this first moment in which our eyes met
And the charts upon which our life’s course was set.

In that instant Love’s wisdom dispensed henceforth
With all need for knowing and seeing
And bound us forever, our spirits together
In a life of Becoming and Being.