The Candle
A flame leaps on a taper’s end
like a child filled with joy
or when playing with his friend –
such warm, bright light in a boy.
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Tag: flame
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New Spring
The memories of raw winter fade like youth
before the season’s budding daffodils.
We used to walk this narrow path together
from our home to the crest of the bare hill.
There we stopped to watch whitecaps and sea oats.
Just as often, we stayed home, nude in bed.
While the coffee steamed over a blue flame,
I kissed your ribs, and you let yourself be led.
The dogs lazed, and dust dappled the light beams.
Such are the warp and weft of the past’s loom,
whose fabrics are of unstylish design.
I moved houses when the hyacinths bloomed.
I left behind our old, bayonetted ghosts.
Such battle-weary and war-torn phantoms
are taxing partners for the jaunty soul
and will hold a wistful mind at ransom.
I left pining wraiths in our kitchen and field,
where, with great care, we’d raised violets and phlox.
So, when spring came, and the air’s clean perfume
was beholden to fields of wild lilacs,
my mind involuntarily recalled you.
But I’m holding hands with a new lover,
so I take the unsought reminiscence,
lay it back among ivy and clover,
and walk with her from those bygone places,
into the sunlight that warms our faces.
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Lovers Under the Bright Stars
We lay out under the bright stars:
Saw the moon lay in her crescent,
Saw the prairie stretch out to Mars.
We felt nostalgic and prescient.
Her heart was as pure as clear ice.
My heart was hungry as a wolf.
Words came at far too dear a price.
Love lay between us like a gulf.
If she leaves here in the morning
All that’s left will be memory
Like an orange fire that’s burning
That leaves an ash that’s hot and grey.
The horses they start to snuffle.
The dog is whining to go home.
If love can come through this shuffle
It’ll last till memory is gone.
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The Hopeful and the Damned
We are some of us moths flying into flame,
Burned and burning yet unable to give a damn,
Propelled by a force we cannot name
To escape, to wander this wondrous land.
We set off, in uneven times, with a strangled cry,
despite a prudent fear of the unknown,
There is sure loss of life for those that will not try
To flee the far, far greater peril of the known.
There’s risk in staying still: yawning to death,
Softening, or miserable suffocation.
Such hope for new life and free breath,
Brings us, panting, to the platform of a station.
And God knows we miss some things left behind:
The work unfinished, the plans unstarted,
Sentimental things, a cherished friend so kind,
The people and the animals, the heavenly departed.
But life is short. It is astoundingly, unflinchingly short.
It is but a blink in the universe, here and then gone,
It flashes by so quickly there is little time to sort
The nursery from the hospice, the sunset from the dawn.
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Disregard the Stars
For some people, there is only one true love, no matter who or what else may exist. “Disregard the Stars” describes that feeling of devotion.
The rhyme scheme is ababcdefefcdcd.
Imagine if each of the stars was a lady
And the sky shone with their allure every night
Or if each leaf in a tree that is shady
Was a girl who was both lovely and bright
Still I would not look from your eyes
When you smile with your hands clasped in mine.
And think if each flash on the ocean
Was an old romance that sparked into flame
Or if each flicker on a land that lay frozen
Was a call to a new and voluptuous game
Still I’d use every means ever devised
To keep our loving hearts well intertwined
For it’s true that love knows no demise
When devotion and affection align.
