Poetry

The loneliest poem in the world

There is the wind in the trees 

and the ripples in the river

and I am 

the loneliest poem in the world.


How I long to be spoken 

on gilded tongues

the kind that whisper mellifluously on the open air

yet carry to the furthest corner.


How I long to fill your mind’s eye 

with the wonder of dappled sunlight

and fill your sight with visions

of eternity unbroken,


O, how I long to be read.


But I am hidden in these dark pages,

shelved and forgotten

and remembered only when the fancy

comes upon my master –

that shiver of remembrance of me.

 

And then the light…


How glorious to be:

spoken on open air,

read in open mind,

freed from the binding

of my spirit

to echo in eternity.


But always I return

unto the page, the dark, the shelf

and I am

the loneliest poem in the world.

They walked with Her too

She found me in the wilderness.

I was not looking for her; she was not looking for me.

She had dolphin’s eyes and the weight of a beached whale.

She was more like the trees than me.

So we walked.

She showed me the world: its straight roads and round-a-bouts;

its cul-de-sacs,

and we walked.

Valleys led to ridges, ridges to mountain tops

and, when on high, I circled Her

like sparrows round seed,

like stars around the southern sky –


beneath which we lie –


and what She knew, I knew;

and i forgot.


We walked long into the night;

she cast peace upon the waters.

The moon and stars were hooked fish she drew 

across the glassy surface.


Rivers flowed where rivers flow

and an ocean did receive –


at last –


the bodies of my ancestors.


They walked here too.


They who knew the hardness of the rock;

who slept among soft fragrant grasses;

who yearned, as I yearn, for another world;

for they had forgotten:


They walked with Her too.