PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

On the morning of our most perfect day,
she stepped out to enjoy the sunlight.
She wore her new, long, very modest skirt,
and the fishnet stockings she loved the best
(small, black mesh, and the toes woven in with black silk).
and not even the slightest thought of shoes,
or of a top---more than her long wild hair---
to cover her nubile adolescent breasts, bare
for both my pleasure and hers.
She brought me a sprig of lilac:
we both loved the scent.
This brief pause in the brief frenzy of first, young love
dominates my memory;
and every subsequent moment is measured by it,
is measure by it and found wanting beside it.
I lived, and she did not:
that is the only way to say so and retain
some semblance
of sanity and equipoise.
I lived, and she did not;
some forty years gone;
the better taken, and the worse
left behind.  She lives in every verse
I have written---from scholars and poets, minor acclaim;
not mine but hers.  They still say her name.
She is not lost in the might have been;
in my poems, until death unites us, we frolic again.
 
Starward
 
[jlc]