As a romance writer who can hardly visualize a tale that does not have a love story, and one with a happy ending, this day is special to me! I posted on my other blog www.deirdre-fourds.blogspot.com more about what the day and what Love means to me! Here as a little gift to my friends and readers--or maybe I should say ours since Gwynn and I both take part in this--I'm sharing a few favorite verses on the subject of love from Gwynn's book Walking Down My Shadows. As I admitted on the other blog, a lot of the content is hardly deathless poetry but it is all honest and sincere and real to the writer at the time each verse was set down. Life is messy, untidy, sometimes painful to the point of being maudlin and all of that is reflected in the poems in that book. But a few I'm proud to claim and would offer no apologies for. I'll try to find three or four of those to share today.
One Summer Evening (7-1-65 )
You came to
me at twilight in answer to my call.
I thought
that you’d forgotten but you hadn’t after all.
Your voice was full of sorrow when you spoke
that night to me
Of things that should not happen and things
that could not be.
I turned to
you in anguish, torn by the grief we shared.
To let you
know I love you and prove how much I cared
You held me to you tightly your face pressed
in my hair
And then I turned to kiss you…I could stay
forever there.
The
matchless aching sweetness of the touch of your first kiss
That woke
this sleeping princess could not have been amiss.
We parted with a handclasp, strong and sweetly
tender
That matched our kiss in sweetness if not in
stirring splendor.
I left you
with a promise echoing in my heart—
Again we’ll
be together if tonight we have to part.
I left you with a heartache and a gently
murmured sigh,
The last words softly whispered: Goodbye,
Dear Heart, goodbye.
Sunday (6/69)
Was it just yesterday?
The air was warm, in motion.
Your eyes were warm, deep and still.
Metallic in the sun, your hair
like water rippled by the wind.
If it was yesterday . . . .
The wind blew our words
away, but eyes spoke clearer.
In no mime of love, we lay
apart, looks only touching.
And the grass is crushed where we lay.
And it was yesterday.
Your hand, leaf-brown,
tender in its strength,
I might have touched
but didn't, couldn't. . .
So where is yesterday?
Your face, unsoftened angles,
is still in my eyes but
the line is drawn again
black and plain between.
Still, the grass is
crushed where we lay. Death of Dreams (70)
Dreams die
hard and slowly
Flows back
life to fill
The vacuum
left in heart bereft
Of
trespassive love that still
Tenacious
grows from tangled roots--
An ancient,
wind-warped tree
That clings
upon its weathered cliff
As for
eternity.
Dreams die
hard and slowly
heals the
spirit torn
By an
untimely severance of
Timeless
bonds, reborn.
A Touch (9-15-79)
I sat so still
beneath your hand
Afraid you might
misunderstand
And somehow read
as a rejection
Should I stir.
Yet with affection
Flowing sweetly
from that touch
I could only
think how much
I wished it would never end.
I did not dare
to move at all
And yet wished
my lips might fall
And lightly
brush the fingers curled
About my
shoulder, holding my world
In their warm
and gentle clasp.
But there was no
way to grasp
That perfect
moment, hold it fast,
And make it last
and last and last.
The Silent Song
Words without music is a silent song:
A lonely child who sought to belong,
A fearful soul striving so hard to be strong.
Of love a silent
song I must sing
Offering dreams,
the best I can bring,
(though I fly
like a bird with a broken wing.)
If half of love is all that can be
My half must be yours so take it from me
And hear what I sing, who shall never be free.
Love like a flood is sweeping me under,
Loving and giving, I cannot sunder
And knowing me well, how can you wonder?
When yours is the
hand that led me along,
Yours is the
strength that helped me be strong--
My words without
music are a silent song.
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