I've missed this soft hum of night
where passing cars blur indistinct
and I with them.

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here -- a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into ****** motley --
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving kindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love me not,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
—I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love me not.

A man waiting on someone to die
drinks another cup, sighs
and looks at his watch, the face
everyone rememembers
for its twitch and drooping eye,
always running, always losing
a second, an hour, sometimes a day,
a year on the wrist of the dead.

Slow mind on a speeding train
Tracks across, dragging tired
Eyes beam, lighting up the night

Away from that house
So filled with memories
Some of which you'd like to leave
While others sting their bittersweet
Of some of them you still dream

A summer haze, a billowing cloud
A firelit kiss and the sounds of the night
With sleep in the corner opening its eyes

Then from the dream
Haunting the seconds you're awake
Your fever broke, your hands did hold
I didn't mind your passing
I do mind the cold

It flutters, wings, a beat and a hush before a slow meandering breeze, chaos theories, how you and me and everyone we know, converging with our little lives, a little lost, a little slow, we curve and carve little histories as we embark, out in the night, into the dark, our passing lives like little sparks.

We connect, break and fall apart, rearrange, stay the same or never lift off from our starts, we carry suitcases, we carry hearts, we carry memories with misery or merrily, branching out like canopies, we sway in the breeze, we lose our leaves, we dry and wither, we fall to earth to dust to soil, and we all give back no matter how we end, what we expel always comes back in again.

A tick of a clock against the stillness of a rock, sands of time, or ball and twine, unravel tapestries of fluidity, amorphous and amorous, from chance to serendipity and the distance between a day in the sun and a sleeping eternity.

Life takes all chances and spreads them apart, sprawling out in similarities, diverging, converging, emergence between shifting walls of time running forward or backward, inward and outward, spread out like little pockets in a universe of motion, of movement and how that echoes in time, how a moment is never truly lost but stored both in the recesses of a mind and as something that was, that is and that will be, all at once and over again.

It becomes quiet when you see the little heralds of the things that will be, everything becomes much bigger than it initially seemed, like a complicated machine or a symphony composed of symmetry and  asymmetry and I am just a small part in it all, so frail, so small, a human singularity, singular I fall, the construct of reality deconstructing my reality.

Think not of it, sweet one, so;---
      Give it not a tear;
Sigh thou mayst, and bid it go
      Any---anywhere.

Do not lool so sad, sweet one,---
      Sad and fadingly;
Shed one drop then,---it is gone---
      O 'twas born to die!

Still so pale? then, dearest, weep;
      Weep, I'll count the tears,
And each one shall be a bliss
      For thee in after years.

Brighter has it left thine eyes
      Than a sunny rill;
And thy whispering melodies
      Are tenderer still.

Yet---as all things mourn awhile
      At fleeting blisses,
E'en let us too! but be our dirge
      A dirge of kisses.

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy,—will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whispered close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Makeyour best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
Heart! Thou and I are here, sad and alone;
I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.
Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;
Yet would I on this very midnight cease,
And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,
But Death intenser—Death is Life's high meed.