There fared a time ‘we’ were the vital thing,
yet now the case is fair it’s ye and her.
My role perhaps was harrower of Winter
while she’s the water, seed and sun of Spring.
God forms right plans and sorts His unique tools
as junctures of our lives wed intertwined,
but when they’re o’er we are not undermined
nor forced to feel we’re slyly played as fools.
For Providence has granted precious gifts
which by His grace we learn and grow and flow’r,
and these need ne’er be lost in parting hour                                              
nor poisoned by the bitterness of rifts.
So rise our wings with richer, brighter hue
to soar upon Christ’s love which tarries true.

I look the last this land I leave behind —
Timeless as water, bountiful as sorrow,
Abode today, a memory tomorrow;
Her contours etched untarnished in my mind —
How sweet our first encounter; how unkind
That time which man is wont to beg and borrow
Brought forth this bitter twilight ere a morrow
When all our self-same sunsets will have shined —
    Henceforth sunrise shall tarry ere it greets me;
    The midday sun shall cast a sterner gaze
    As paths unknown reveal their hidden troves;
    Home is the sacrifice for those who journey
    Without return;  We venture through the groves
    Of doubt and fear to set our lives ablaze.

I brought her to the water by the moon,
To share with her, the shade beside the sea,
I gave to her my eyes, that she might see,
and sang to her the most afflicted tune.

I prayed of her what she might ever do,
When faced with all the mightiest would fear,
She whispered, through a solitary tear,
A crystal verse to stay her last adieu.

When fires of gold have shed their morning light,
When embers fade and only ash remains,
When enemies of old are at the gates,

Do not embrace the darkness of that night,
Or think upon those ashes with disdain,
For all that might remain will share our fate.

A darkness crept into my waking crypt,
Its tendrils coiled to grip my tortured throat,
Till retching, retching, gurgled on a rote,
Prostrate, held in its clutches, tightly gripped —
No eye perceived this devil as it slipped
From day to blackened day inside to gloat;
An instrument was I to sound its note,
A plaything used, discarded, broken, stripped —
The world became a window; The outdoors
Turned alien; The beast remained inside,
Content to keep the prison of my mind —
From time to time I dared unto the stores,
        But ever on returning I would find
        The nightmare waiting where we both reside.

By celestial shores is there burnished gold
More fair than I see in my lover's eyes,
Or seraphs whose pulchritude to behold
Nears my queen's opalescence of the skies?
For though I know days will fade into night,
And nights will evermore melt into day,
But my love, like as hues of the sun's light
That ever glows the same, so shall it stay
With constance like as tides of gushing time
That neither man nor birds of skies above
Can dare grasp, but watch 'em roll clime to clime.
So, as far as lives time, so shalt my love,

   For like as water doth abound the sea,
   So doth her love upon a heart of mine.


©Kikodinho Edward Alexandros,
Los Angeles, California. 9/1st/2019.