ON THE WAY TO YOU AND ME.

On the way to you another route diverts me.

I get caught up in assumptions like forks do in spaghetti,

You have a house, this means you must be boring,

Your spirit crushed by dull routine

Not soaring.

Your children sit in a neat row at the table,

Only eating with their fingers when they’re able

And that’s when you’re not there

To scold, to admonish,

To disapprove or stop and stare.

On you’re way to me you get diverted,

You reach your destination

Eyes averted.

I’m down-at-heel with just one change of clothes.

I live on the streets,

You hold your nose.

I play a harmonica, hope for change

And you drop in a penny, salve your conscience,

Think I’m strange.

On my way to you I get distracted,

Thinking of what the last one thought

How they reacted

To the news that I had to convey.

You must be narrow-minded,

Were you born that way?

I work beside you in your smart new jacket,

Last time I told someone they just couldn’t hack it.

You said you were getting married soon

And were excited.

I’m thinking of a civil partnership

But my chances are blighted

Even though they have now changed the law.

You must be thinking you’re the only one

Entitled to love or sex,

Only for you was what those things were made for.

On your way to me you get distracted.

Thinking just because I work with you or yours I’ll be attracted

To them, ‘specially if they’re juveniles.

What do you think of me mincing down the supermarket aisles?

Me with my feminine voice and masculine name,

At first you think my parents are to blame

That it’s their shame

Instead of cards given by fate on but one single day,

Then you remember it took two “straights”

To produce a gay.

On my way to you I got so lost,

Just like a wind-blown boat which a storm had tossed.

Then when I reached you or you reached me I hid my hands

Knowing you’d not like me –

Or understand

You with your perfect vision and your painting

Thinking that I, your whole world

Will be tainting

So you draw the shutters,

Helping me cross the road I hear you mutter

“poor thing” – Glad it isn’t me that’s been afflicted,

confined to a life of darkness and restricted”.

On your way to me you get embarrassed,

Making your language clumsy,

Your manner harrassed,

“What shall I say”?

“Suppose I should fill my mouth of teeth with my foot”!

“What shall we talk about? Me with my sight

to her in a land that’s

black as soot”?

Then on a Sunday morning in October it strikes me

That if we could come as children do –

Me to you and you to me,

Fresh and without any pre-conceived ideas,

Rid of all our prejudices, negativity and fears,

Then we could find a true meeting of minds

Between the homeless one

The gay one

The sighted and

The blind.

I know that this is possible

I’ve seen it at first-hand,

The ice thawing round a heart that’s been held

In an intelligent hand,

We are all human,

Driven by the same need,

For love whatever our disability

Colour

Sexual orientation

Or our creed

So let us come as children do and learn

To give our love and friendship,

Exchange our thoughts.

A harvest of rich rewards

Will be our return.