It is only human to love.
I’ll make no apologies
for my currents and currencies.
For also
revealing my humanity.
I know many dark facets
of this existence.
I know what it means to fight
and to love.
Sometimes they are the same.
Maybe it’s all I’ve ever known.
I’ve bore the consequences
of my desires
and been born again
time and time
again.
I am no stranger nor victim
to the raging infernos
of this life.
We were born to confront
the chaos of this world
and turn it into love.
It is only human.

.
I know this place,
light stone avenues,
fig, pear, apricot and apple,
trees that line in rows,
cut paving with neat gutters
**** white granite buildings,
as ferns and creepers
cascade from roof gardens,
the green shining vivid
in appreciation of being alive.
And I connect across the aeons,
this place was my home,
from centuries long passed,
yet reaching out to be found.
The avenues mimic my mind,
long straight and narrow,
broad and winding,
leading to sedate squares
to sit and feel the sun,
to bathe in beautiful isolation.
And the trees sway
casually in a breeze so soft,
it caresses the branches,
enough to tickle the leaves
and cool the ripening fruit.
Here, the forest erupts,
circles around this sanctuary,
forming a natural hedge
to this garden of tranquility,
this oasis in the maelstrom,
this home in my heart.
Flowers of honeysuckle,
jasmine, of clovers and lily,
adorn walls and buildings,
bright in contrast
to the shadows of the trees,
bloom with the intensity of colour,
riotous in hue and arrangement,
yet, ordered to Nature's Law.
Paradise wrapped in image,
slicing through time and space,
my place a thousand years ago,
my place to claim forever,
and the wind carries me home,
I know this place,
because it lives inside of me,
because I made it.


© Pagan Paul (06/06/18)

I watch as an older woman in a red flowery
dress holding yellow flowers looks out to the sea
Searching for the young man she fell
in love with at the ripe age of twenty three
He gave his life that day on the Normandy shore
on the sixth of June the year was forty-four
Every year this woman comes to the sea to remember
For when she said her marriage vows
she meant them to last to the end of her forever
She throws the yellow flowers out to the sea
Always grateful for the love they shared
and proud that he fell in the cause for the free