Lost love

You came back
Called out of the blue
Said you were sorry
Said you’d been a fool.
I never changed
Always hoped
Arms ever open
Waiting for you to grow.
Now you are here
I touch your hand
Incessantly
Afraid to find nothing
But empty air.
You smile
But in your eyes
A shadow lingers
A door I cannot open.
The past
Is a desperate place.

Like swans

Not effusive
Are we
After years of familiarity.
A gentle contact
Of words and voices,
A simple touch is enough.
But deeper than the fiercest passion
It goes
Fused into the matter of the heart
In the unsounded depths
Of the most private places.
Exclusive
We live
As swans are exclusive
Needing nothing more than one another.
And I dread the one night
That will take you from my side
When I will wake and reach
And you will not be there.
That one night will be a small death.
The heart will shrink and curl around its loss
Until I see you in the doorway
With the smile that springs
from deep within the place only I will ever know
And a handful of souvenirs I do not share.
You will enfold me in the wings of your arms
And in that moment
You, I, the universe will be whole again.

© allen watkin

She finds a place in the pattern

I cannot be the earth and turn away from winter cold

or the new sun’s strength to stir the sleeping shoots

and warm the ruffled feathers of a winter bird.

I cannot heal a million hurts with my untutored hands

or ease away the pain in every heart.

My fingers do not guide the pen that signs the paper

my quiet voice will never reach across the world.

I can only be what I was made

and shape my thoughts the only way I know

to sing the beauty in all things

that creep and fly and fight and love.

And at the end when all that can be said is said

and all that can be done is done

as all the stars in my receding sky

go out and fall into the darkness one by one

I will turn to you, my sun, my light, my life

and slip into the circle of your arms

the stilly calm where I have found beginning and an end

the centre and the confines of my universe.

What are your dreams?

Jeremiah Walton asks the question on his poet’s blog: what are your dreams? Then he suggests his readers go away and write a poem about the answer. This is my answer.

Dreams

To sit with you
beneath an apple tree
or a vine-strung pergola
and watch the light fade.
And hear only life
growing, singing, breathing.
To know the air full of birds,
the sea deep and teeming,
the earth a riot of roots
and digging and delving things.
For peace to fall soft
from the stars to the sea depths.
But most of all
to sit with you.

Like a tree

Like a tree

First
Love is green growing
supple sulphurous striving
quick quarrelsome querulous.
Passions blaze brilliant
flaming sunflares
fire-fashioned.

Boughs spread strong straight
striving sunward
though storm bends breaks blights.
Vine clings climbs
blazoned with blossom
that twists and twines
embellishing with cupped stars
suncatching.

Calm comes
soft as evening
enfolding encompassing
passions and peace.
Beneath flower festooned boughs
entangled embracing
inextricably entwined
we sit
storm-battered
still fire-fashioned
forever.