Poem: Fairy Tale

One of my favorite poems about love and every aspect of it is true and if you don't believe that, you don't believe in fairies.

Fairy Tale Their love was well documented, known long before they allowed themselves to think about it The streets they walked, amazingly chalked with hopscotch patterns, marked where no children lived Trees under which they sat, rustled leaves on afternoons while sailboats lay dead becalmed A neighbor took note, the bus was always there for them, a scheduling miracle of sorts, proving fairies were about, requiring candles lit in the local parish Love is like that They were late to the party, so to speak, blissfully unaware, insofar as the recognition of these signs Believing they had a choice about such matters of the heart, of soft leaf music and hopscotch patterns She thought about him mostly when he wasn’t there and he could think of little else but her, there or not Letting a few things slide at work and wondering why, but the wind knew and cracks in the sidewalk always know and the bus of course was the clincher Soft music in the background And so it went, when it went at all, in fits and starts, stargazers looking backward-looks, sometimes forgetting laundry And then it went more quickly, the heady stuff of learning the fun to be had over scorched eggs at breakfast More breakfasts shared these days, a winding of the clock that ticked in the wind and brought the bus There’s a time for ecstasy and it seemed to be their time and it was new, golden as French toast and the neighbor lit candles for the bus that kept coming Illustrations boldly drawn in color Their unraveling should have been known to them as well and wasn’t, but then this is a fairy tale of sorts And after a while, scorched eggs no longer seemed such fun and the drain in the kitchen sink backed up on Tuesday Before much longer, the bus was strangely late and so were they, as the neighbor lady smiled and saved her candle money Once, a quiet midnight rain crept around the corner of the window and crawled across the ceiling, dripping precisely, to drop exactly in the middle of the bed, wetting no one An omen, fairy tales have omens He began to make excuses then and she began to accept them, glad to stay late at her office and catching up on Vonnegut Eggs after all, were high in cholesterol and maybe he was too So it seemed logical to diet and fall out of love The water mark on the ceiling dried, the sink regained magical gravitational efficiency and a persistent pimple disappeared She runs for buses now and all too often the doors are closing and strangely enough she whistles and waits for another Because in fairy tales, another bus will always come along

This poem is included in Jim Freeman's poetry collection CORNER OF MY MIND available here in print or as an e-Book in your favorite formats.