You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen <br />Afraid of how you might fail yourself your <br />dress seven summers old is kept open <br />in memory of sex, smells warm, of boys, <br />and of the once long grass. <br />But we are colder now; we have not <br />Love’s first magic here. You come to me <br />Quiet as bulbs not yet broken <br />Out into sunlight. <br /> <br />The fear I see in your now lining face <br />Changes to puzzlement when my hands reach <br />For you as branches reach. Your dress <br />Does not fall easily, nor does your body <br />Sing of it won accord. What love added to <br />A common shape no longer seems a miracle. <br />You come to me with your age wrapped in excuses <br />And afraid of its silence. <br /> <br />Into the paradise our younger lives made of this bed and room <br />Has leaked the world and all its questioning <br />and now those shapes terrify us most <br />that remind us of our own. Easier now <br />to check longings and sentiment, <br />to pretend not to care overmuch, <br />you look out across the years, and you come to me <br />quiet as the last of our senses closing.<br /><br />Brian Patten<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-come-to-me-quiet-as-rain-not-yet-fallen/
