"I know I'll Never Find Another You(s)"

“He’s such a laugh,” you enthused,
But you used a Midlands accent
The same one you deployed
That weekend you lost your job
But assured me, from the forest, you were
“. . . having such a good time.”

When you sensed what I was doing
You went slightly Californian,
But a Californian child asking
“Are you breaking up with me?
“No-one’s ever done that before
“I don’t know how I’d react.”

In anger, Cheltenham Ladies’.
The clipped late-50s spinster,
A maid still? Her fiancé
Lost somewhere round the Somme,
Wading through the river,
Strategic to the battle.

You never wade through
The same Somme twice.
Just as with you,
Different waters flow,
Different ways of grinding through
The earth, the hardened granite:

The flirt without a boundary.
The mistress, drunk on truest love,
The rawest poet; stand-up wit.
The evensong-ing scholar.
Prospector girlfriend, virgin, loyal
To well-connected Mummy’s boy.
The psychiatric patient, powerless goddess
Thrust among those who’d do her harm.
The toddler, iced in terror,
Emerging
At the most intimate of moments.

“He was very physical with me,” you said
When we first met, in your own RP.
“He made me feel threatened.”
But the laughter could come
At any time as well. Those trips
To viaducts, long-forgotten,
Perhaps near some Midlands town.