Are you ready to fall in love with me?

Are You Ready to Fall in Love with Me?
or, The Love Song of Possibilities

Prologue

In an emergency room, a physician thought that he heard a patient whisper a lyrical plea to his lover. The patient, a young man, and was in the most critical condition. The patient apparently was not in a full waking state, and, at times, the physician thought the pitch and volume of the patient’s voice changed. He screamed; he spoke in monotone; he whispered; he sang.

It is well to note that the physician had been on duty for twenty-two hours, and was due to be relieved. He studied the patient’s chart, and observed the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. The physician thought he heard a rhythm to the patient’s speech. A nurse came, and saw the young physician as though he were in a trance. She asked if she could bring him some coffee. He said yes, and also asked for several sheets of blank paper.

The physician claimed that what follows is a verbatim transcript of what he heard the patient say.

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
I have been waiting for only one answer
An answer from you.
Just as I wait under a tree of life
That keeps me safe from this
Imperial rain -- maybe not as only god knows
From my imperious one track mind
That orders my thoughts to border
On insanity –
I think and think only of you.
Sweet thoughts though.
Sweet delirious thoughts under this bough
That will be gold when you come again
Even before the sunlight does.
I will wait until you are here with me
As these little buds wait to awake when spring
Rules over all -- ecstasies of pollen spray the air
When everyone knows spring is here.
All possible I see under this sacred tree
Sheltering me from the impatient sky
Ready to get on with it and entreat
The soil to soften and lovers to walk in the heat--
Telling stories of outrageous impressions
When they first saw themselves in discretion
As strangers when they met as we did
That misshapen morn when I fawned
All over you though you were oblivious
To any such extravagances of my reserve
I usually kept inside to serve when in company
I’d keep for unromantic trysts and inanity.
You sat by a window to the world of some wrack
Studying some words in a paperback.
Were they translatable?
Were they philosophical?
You never answered me though
I knew that you and not the words were mystical.
And when you turned to the noise
I learned some things that I’ve kept,
Even times when I wept,
Secrets all this time to tell you.

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
Then you called my bluff -- I never knew
How you knew I wasn’t so tough.
You dropped a glove near where
I sat behind you --what were you doing
With a glove on a spring like day when
The equinox of renewal was less than
Some less than momentous thoughts away?
I stupidly asked if you were challenging
Me to a duel, and you audaciously moved
To my table and I ordered more coffee.
You said that the caffeine would keep me up,
And I said that all I ever wanted to do
Was with you to keep up.

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
You said that was a possible impossibility.
No one has to know – like Doris Day
You could say that once you had a secret love
And you’ll decide when to explode
All your earthly delight to bring others
To know of this illusion and come to the hill
Where you shout my name --
My ten or fifteen minutes of fame.
You took my pen and scrawled your
Phone number all over my cahier –
You crossed out my name and wrote
“TAKEN” so loudly that this marking
Could never not be mistaken for taken.
And we didn’t know our names yet.
And then the remark I made
About your blue eyes -- that they were
A mutation maybe six thousand years
Old -- you said I should be more direct--
Just say that I am mesmerized
By your most beautiful blue eyes.
It slipped out of me to my surprise
That I loved your eyes more than
Any I had ever seen, and it was then
That your mascara ran like my reserve.
I wanted to just say, “I love you.”

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
All I could think of was to say
That we could stay up all night
Till first light-- we could go
To Coney Island, wake up everyone
Or, we could break a bottle of champagne
Over the prow of Staten Island’s Ferry
Or, we could next meet at the top
Of the Empire State Building
To take the spaces where
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr
And Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne
Had before them done, or
Once imagined they would do.

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
I called and you pretended not to know me.
I laughed so hard you hung up the phone.
And I was all alone by the phone, undone
Until you rang again to say I wasn’t off the hook.
I was a perfect gentleman – I couldn’t tell
You were kidding me until you asked
Whether I could dance and before I could say no
I escorted you to your friend’s wedding
Or, was it that you escorted me? – I felt
Awkward because I couldn’t sit with you --
You the bridesmaid and who knows
Maybe a bride, but I did dance with you --
You who were so light on your feet.
When I asked if you were a dancer
When you danced circles around me
So fast!
There was no time to step on your feet
With my two left ones that I didn’t feel anyway
Because the wine and or you made me dizzy.
I think it was you.
Like I feel now, wondering upside down--
Why can’t I move—pinch me please!
Who is that writing there? What’s keeping you?

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
I will live forever in all things that you may do.
Are you coming here to visit me?
That’s the least you could do--
How nice, you will come.
You’ve made a decision.
I know what it is.
Will you bring me flowers?
Will you bring me chocolate?
I can’t move you know.
Will you remember the first time that you saw me?
Or, are you just coming to claim the glove that you dropped?
I love this glove that fits and starts all of this.
I dream that I am in this crazy place
These strange people stare at me,
Dressed in white, so methodical.
They pinch and prick and palpate--
Make me swallow such bitters.

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
I want to taste your lips again.
Like I did before we left when we first met.
You surprised me with your sweet ambush--
Felled by this shock I couldn’t resist--
Curtains of propriety fell away.
You said I wanted to do that all along.
And I admitted so to your coy smile.

Are you ready to fall in love with me?
Let’s do something right here in this bed.
You’ll be my nurse and make the rounds
All night when there are no sounds
And you’ll wake me from this state
With your sweet kisses for your mate.
Why am I here?
I wait for you.
Please hurry – there’s not much time
To be together, alone, as one again.
Hurry, but please tell me, darling,
Are you ready to fall in love with me?

Epilogue

The physician said that was the last he heard the delirious man say. He saw that the man’s clenched fist held a leather glove, when a pretty woman with the bluest eyes that he had ever seen came in. She went to the bed where the man lay and kissed him lightly on the lips and she held the kiss for a long time. The man did not stir. She cried.

The physician said that the woman told him many things, but that he must promise never to tell anyone her secret. The physician gave his word. He could not help wondering why couldn’t the man have been able to see his fair woman?

His fair woman came in to be with him once more. Just a few minutes more. The physician blamed himself. The woman hugged him, and thanked him for what he did. She said goodbye, looked over at the man once more and left. The physician never saw her again. It was strange that no one came to claim the man’s body. Rather than let the man be taken by the state and to lay in potter’s field, the physician arranged for a beautiful funeral for the man. No family or friends came to see the dead man. The physician called him a dead poet. Yes, no one who knew the man in this life came to see him. The story spread, and almost all the hospital staff came to pay their respects. It was a beautiful service.

Through the stained glass, the morning light cast a mourning light upon the face of the physician, bluer than blue. The physician began his eulogy that stopped time for everyone who came to be with the dead man that the physician called a poet. Some said that they had never heard such a eulogy.

The eulogy began with these words, "Are you ready to fall in love with me?”