On looking at a pin-up photograph...

I've been working on a Lughnasad poem, but it isn't quite gelling and keeps veering off into random imagery.  I mention it to a friend who says "I like your poems" (- preen- ) "did you ever post that one about having a crush online?"

Slightly awkward pause.

Me: I think I've written rather a lot of poems about crushes, which one were you thinking of?

Eventually we narrowed it down to this...  It was written a long time ago, for a quite different crush to the current one, but it still rings true.

On looking at a pin-up photograph

For most of us it is a dream, to be
The object of another's dreams.
I can't imagine who you are
Yet hold you in my hands.
Your face with dreaming smiling eyes
Perfected, made unreal, within
An inch or two of glossy colour;
A real man's charm, reduced to paper's sheen.
I've held you in my arms, in dreams,
And we have danced alone
Past stationary trains,
A shining midnight merengue
In the sleeping mind's surreal
Deserted mainline terminal.
I can't imagine how you dream,
But when you wake I know
You can put on another life, another
Mind, and your bright eyes
Perfect another's smile
Or dream their pain, each day.
Holding your picture in my hands
I have to smile as if you smiled at me;
Knowing that it would simply be
Another role for you, if we
Could really dance, and not in dreams.