CREPUSCULE

Name this light a kind of tinting
Between dark and day, a mauve
Interwoven with blue heaven
Hovering over the yew grove.

Always did we keep this hour
Special in our home: your chair,
My chair, sherry on the table
By the gabled window there…

We would look out on new tulips
Then the trumpet vine and phlox
Then nasturtiums and then nothing
But white winter as we talked.

Souls we shared and spoken truly,
Trusting we could lay them bare
In the care of cherished friendship
Which was ours rich and rare…

But a sadness lurks in twilight
Seeks a help to see it through
Wants a lullaby for dying
Needs a loving rendez-vous.

So I shudder now at gloaming,
Gloom and dusk—one and the same,
Same two chairs, one glass for sherry
And an ache without a name.
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CREPUSCULE
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Séadna: ” Irish poetry form. Syllabic. Quatrains of alternating octosyllabic lines with disyllabic endings, and helptasyllabic lines with monosyllabic endings. Lines 2 and 4 rhyme; line 3 rhymes with the stressed word preceding the final word of line 4. There are two cross-rhymes in the second couplet. There is alliteration in each line, the final word of line 4 alliterating with the preceding stressed word. The final syllable of line 1 alliterates with the first stressed word of line 2. The poem (not the stanza) ends with the same first syllable, word, or line with which it begins.” –Turco, Handbook of Poetics

SONETTO INCREDULO

There used to be a wish for your return
here in my heart, a craving for your smile
so I could bask in it again, a little while
and know the worthiness for which I yearn—

the love you brought, that taught me to unlearn
all anger, sadness, sense of alien exile
and know a place where we together could beguile
from seeming ashes, embers, constancy of burn.

But so much grief has been, and change,
a certain strangeness I believed could never be
has crept into my unbelief and now seems true:

you would not want this world, so rearranged
by time, which once so cruelly stole you from me,
and now, incredibly, is stealing me from you.

.

SONETTO INCREDULO

CREPUSCULE

Name this light a kind of tinting
Between dark and day, a mauve
Interwoven with blue heaven
Hovering over the yew grove.

Always did we keep this hour
Special in our home: your chair,
My chair, sherry on the table
By the gabled window there…

We would look out on new tulips
Then the trumpet vine and phlox
Then nasturtiums and then nothing
But white winter as we talked.

Souls we shared and spoken truly,
Trusting we could lay them bare
In the care of cherished friendship
Which was ours rich and rare…

But a sadness lurks in twilight
Seeks a help to see it through
Wants a lullaby for dying
Needs a loving rendez-vous.

So I shudder now at gloaming,
Gloom and dusk–one and the same,
Same two chairs, one glass for sherry
And an ache without a name.

CREPUSCULE

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.

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Séadna: ” Irish poetry form. Syllabic. Quatrains of alternating octosyllabic lines with disyllabic endings, and helptasyllabic lines with monosyllabic endings. Lines 2 and 4 rhyme; line 3 rhymes with the stressed word preceding the final word of line 4. There are two cross-rhymes in the second couplet. There is alliteration in each line, the final word of line 4 alliterating with the preceding stressed word. The final syllable of line 1 alliterates with the first stressed word of line 2. The poem (not the stanza) ends with the same first syllable, word, or line with which it begins.” –Turco, Handbook of Poetics

FUTURE PERFECT

We did not plan
aloud or far ahead
knowing how the envy of the gods
(as that of man) is
easily aroused.  We dreaded
ruining our odds.

We did, however, dream
asleep, awake
of moving on to something more–
from milk to cream
dry bread to honey cake
an after better than before.

We meant more life
just down the road.

Until the universe arranged
an otherwise, a knife
to heart, one morning to explode.
You died, and all was changed.

Instead of dreaming now
alone I let life simply be
the in and out of breath.

I greet its beauty, but allow
no wishful thought, no certainty

except, of course, for death.

BEREFT

Some mornings I awaken with wet eyes;
tears precede my opening to the light.
I’m in a place I do not recognize
at first, my head still cowebbed by the night.

Deep shadows want to pull me back
to mindlessness, deep soft and gray.
I am an overwrought, limp gunnysack
too tired to lug into another day.

To have to re-imagine this old haunt
that was our world—to touch, to walk around
our furniture estranged—so desperately to want
yet lack the sense of being homeward bound:

these are the courages I must begin,
to live a story you’re no longer in.

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BEREFT