We thought we were in paradise, you and I,
where virgin sands and clean blue skies
connect with crystal waters, as though it were
a vivid, magic dream, a place untouched by
life's imbalances.
And heart could sing and voice could shout
in melodies unknown to dark and dusty
memories; when life smiled through our
smiling lips and whispered sweet and fragile
sanities which hovered in the wind awhile
then spiraled out of sight and mind and reach.
We did not hold ourselves to yesterday's gifts
of glad and failing life, but reached with life
towards growing, blooming things, unfinished
rhapsodies, ecstasies in flight, and love
untarnished with regret.
I know right now, as I look into your dimmed
eyes, that what was then can yet revive, can
yet reclaim its living flow, its pa**ion and its
mystic glow. For love is much too strong a living
force to stand behind the rigid wall we made
and dwell there, there amidst neglected hope
and half-starved dreams, abandoned touch and
silence full of muffled wailing.
Like you, I don't know when the road turned dark
or where the path turned crooked and ran into the
weed and brush of apathy. And I shall not ask why.
It is enough to see the light, though dim, is still
alive and flickers in your eyes, so beautiful, so
sad. For one small spark is all we need to build
the raging flame which makes us live and love
and run through flower spotted fields of joy like
children wild and free.
This time it shall be different. For I will watch
and wait and lovingly guard the flaming torch
and will not fall asleep and float somewhere
beyond this moment of our living, of our lives.
No. I will tend our love as a shepherd tends his
flock or a bird its fragile, flightless young. And
though we each shall change according to the
movement of life's growth, we shall not grow
outside each other's loving shadow. For though
two eagles sometimes fly apart, they never fly
beyond each other's sound,
each other's sight.