I Met You

I Met You

2020

jp melville

I met you upon a platform nowhere here one day…

Neither yours nor my train nor station

But there I you we were was…

On platforms not of our own making.

Hey:

This aft about 2 good.

You choose spot.

I am mobile so wherever.

“Little Victories,” you wrote…

That those v’s would grow so, oh…

Even with the white boys golfing on land claimed by others…

Oh… indigenous people’s day…

You said, “Buzzkill”.

I said, “I am indigenous”.

Both of us knowing that neither of us right or wrong:

Both born on and in and through the land that gave us citizenship…

That in any other language gave us native ethnic rooted rights…

For I am not a colour

Nor are you a history

We are the child born…

So we put aside our victories…

Over each other… pale limpid constructs that they are…

Those we have won and those for which we or others fight…

I you we are not an ideology…

God knows that love is not…

But given the playing field…

We will steer clear of drones and all things popular like good wins over evil…

And for the love embedded in our play… our field of risk…

We will admit that we are guilty.

Wherein we find in subterfuge that…

Love has no other name.

Not the plaster of radio news reels and talk about drones nor classrooms nor talks among best of  friends…

For you and I are guilty…

We took the apple and we bit…

For she had the courage to taste and give of knowledge

And he to follow suit.