A Spring Evening in Paris

Anthony found Ellen in the good samaritan way you would try.
If you are not alluring there are other ways.
Ellen, drunk, was left alone near St. Severin off the Rue de la Harpe
Where you smell butter and garlic and mussels and iodine
From bistros open to the street. Anthony loved that you could see
Some lovers eating and drinking in those bistros, happy and good.
He wanted to be in one with a girl.

Ellen, mottled in mottled lamplight on the churchyard cobbles:
Freckled, brown eyed, strong in clean denim overalls and white T-shirt. Barnyard coloured cowlick. She knelt there being sick and knelt inside Anthony,
In a lyric opportunity.
Not many chances like this in life. He nursed and guarded her
To her place in Billancourt. She was afraid on the Metro.
A drunken kiss of thanks at her door tastes of sickness and anise.
Of course he came back. A real man would come back for more thanks, if it was his first chance in months.

She was brave, dramatically friendly, often in
The light that represents candles on stage.
She had the fierce compassion that terrifies.

He had been disqualified from girls by anxiety.

They bought food, flowers and wine in the market
And walked and bought books from bouquinistes
And cooked in her room. He wrote at her table.

The white iron bed by the sunny window can represent everything.

Who was this girl no older than Anthony,
Showing him friendship, making him grateful,
Showing him love?

” I like to do this,
Find one that I love, make something perfect.”

Sneaky shiny good love made both of stealth and of cunning…

Paul Anthony Hutchinson
http://www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
pahutchinson@icloud.com

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