To You

There is poetry in your eyes;

A wild music that cascades like a cliff-bound cataract,

Catching me easily in its surf.

I imagine us, in our silent moments, in watercolour,

Our soft colours blend together,

Bleed together

Swift as rain rushing from road to gutter,

Never static, ever dancing,

The languid morning's star glinting gently off our forms.

Galleries with Van Gogh wallpaper may stand on every continent,

But how can mere painting

Encapsulate what we have?

Turner’s ships don’t sway in the same way

I do in your arms.

The night before, your face was pained in moonlight.

I traced the curved shadows of your profile

With an unsuppressable smile at my willing lips.

You breathed- a soft breeze across my skin:

A comforting chill that reminds me

I am no longer alone.

I think you might be waking.

The orchestra in my breast begins its tremolo.

To think of your kind, dark eyes!

To read the words behind the obsidian glass:

Water under a frozen river.

How in this great world have I been so fortunate as to be his?

But how changed you’ve been

Since disillusion descended and bound

Those most beautiful of gates.

Your mind, now iron and frosted,

Restricts the heart’s aimless stampede.

The wild music, now uniform,

In line with the entrapping wall,

Dulls to desert hues.

And the watercolour fades– blank.

Lines, too, on your arms:

A figure skater’s work.

In time, you may return to me,

But until then I must lay alone.

I will remain until you bid me leave

For, like a solitary wave on the sand,

So must I always return to the comfort of the sea.