By Echolocation
Date: 15 December 2000
Summer Falls
At last now your eyes no longer burn bright
in my mind as they have through so many nights --
At last now no longer your phantom charms
entice me from love in another man's arms --
At last now my heart is my own possession
Forgiveness granted for every transgression --
Having fought through my storms to a port safe and calm
I can meet your dark eyes now with barely a qualm.
Simpler to hate you -- but I cannot unwind
the ivy of you from the tree of my mind
Quietly, subtly, softly you grew
Tendrils and vines that wind through and through
You twine through my past like a strand of pure gold
Precious 'mongst all the base metals I hold.
Without you I would not be who I am tonight,
The weaving I've shaped would not be as bright.
Uprooting the "you" buried deep in the "me,"
like pulling a plug in the depths of the sea,
would drain me away until nothing remained
but a shell on the sand that a child might retain
because of the beauty of what it once was,
not knowing it came from so bitter a cause.
So rather than obliterate every trace
of your touch, or your voice, or your love, or your face
I awaited the sea change that comes to all things
And now sweetness is all that remains of the stings.
The memories, lovely despite the sad finish,
Silver still gleaming through ashes and tarnish,
Resurrect tonight with their whispering call
How beautiful summer is before it falls.
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