The Other Side

And he said: "A Lover is a Lover, and a Poet is a Poet. Whatever made you think you could be both?"

He said, "No, stay.

We have world enough and time, what more is there to say?" but

Believe me, when she tells you, that

There is a world behind this piece of paper.

She wants to tear it open and dive deep inside it,

She wants to swim in ancient words that have rolled off more tongues that there are stars in the sky,

She wants to breathe in the thin, easy dreams of ideas that could be, had been, and never were.

She knows, as sure as it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for her to pass through this paper.

There is a world here, trapped

behind bars of writing-padded lines too strong to bend.

They will not let her in.

And so she will spend the night biting at them, chewing and

gnawing at them like the dog and his proverbial bone.

Convinced,

that behind this piece of paper,

there is a world.

But some day, one day,

She will reach somewhere inside her deep,

where mermaids sing and giants sleep,

and she will seize those bars, with calloused hands

and they will bend, for her,

and for a moment, there will be

a space that opens,

long enough for her to step inside before they close up once again, and then,

then, in a world without end,

watch her,

She will dive in crayon-coloured skies

and she will swim in smoke-filled fancies

and she will catch the will-o-the-wisp

and she will let the birds gather her hair for their nests

and she will defy the leprechaun and walk to the end of his rainbow

and she will run in fields of wheat so golden you would think Midas himself has sown the seeds.

And then she will turn, laughing, wanting to

tell him all about

the vaudeville halls and tragedies that play there

each night - and all the Oz and Wonderlands that lie

behind this piece of paper - but,

there they will be;

bars of writing-padded lines too strong to bend.

And she will stand, in silence then,

and look at him, looking

at her,

just a beautiful world away.

And she will wish that she had listened, when he said,

"No, stay."