Regretfully

So this is how death in love begins:
You stop saying small good mornings,
Berate those insignificant sins,
You once thought of as delightful things.

You take away what I am now used to,
For those are deeds you forget to do;
But I remember these parts of you,
For they were what made your heart feel true.

I am more difficult than I know;
But that is what you already knew;
Now you see what you chose to ignore;
Difficulty seems like something new.

I don’t believe you love me no more.
I do not think any less of you.
But you seem like others gone before,
Past lessons all seem truer than true.

Love is often such that finds those
Who pursued you claiming forever
Forgetting the vows they made in throes,
When your own love starts to endeavor.

Maybe the condescension of time
Is meant to be, is meant to be,
And all feeling is meant to decline,
Regretfully, regretfully.

All of Love’s Hands

In your eyes, I spied something new:
A feeling I had left for dead:
It was something all of time slew,
Deceiving the heart with the head.

Love expands to take in all:
Family, lover and friend
I cannot help but quietly fall
Into light that seems to never end.

That seems to never end is true –
For seeming is just what it gives…
And its brilliant, shiny hue
All confidence in love forgives.

What allure the beginning brings
Influences feelings for you –
Leads me to meet forgotten things
Which cynical time made to rue.

I cannot think of reasons why
I must look the other way;
Though I know, it is vain to try
To make this unsullied light stay.

I tried so many times before,
With so many who were my past,
Love burst with a frenzied furor;
But that light did not seem to last.

Maybe love is such that but seems,
Coming to me in flimsy dreams;
And all it leaves behind
Is permanence one cannot find.

I will still hold all of love’s hands
Even though this heart is in the know
Even though with knowledge understands
That, in time, they will all let go.

Wraith

This year came unto me like a Wraith;
Bearing away my hope in surreal faith;
It unfolded its stygian wings
And spewed forth such ghastly things:
Cancers of different kinds,
Affecting the body, the heart, the mind,
Gods disappeared with flute and tusk,
The sun merely gazed from the gathering dusk.
Fight against the dying light, Thomas said;
But Plath was also a poet to be read.
I tried to run to the sun, catch his light,
His failure proved to be the worst of the blight,
He could do naught but be what he is
And change not a jot of how he lives.
So as the day died, he left me to night
I stopped screaming. I surrendered the fight.
Doing this brought me some clarity:
The utter darkness of wing made me see,
This wraith of Time is my constant friend,
Who doesn’t give hope, who doesn’t pretend,
Who promises not even pain to rend
Some new beginning from an old end.