Another quiet night -
swirling walls taking me for a ride.
Round and round we go,
never changing where we are,
a point in time pinned to the floor.

Axis running through my heart
won't let me move from this spot,
and now I know just what they meant
when they said
Love's the only thing that can
fill you up.

Wheels are spinning in their places
in my muddy mind,
and I am sweating all my stresses
out into this bed
that I am lying in;
I am lying again to and by
myself.

"O'er the dark pines she sees the silver moon,
   And in the west, all tremulous, a star;
And soothing sweet she hears the mellow tune
   Of cow-bells jangled in the fields afar.

Quite listless, for her daily stent is done,
   She stands, sad exile, at her rose-wreathed
           door,
And sends her love eternal with the sun
   That goes to gild the land she'll see no more.

The grave, gaunt pines imprison her sad gaze,
   All still the sky and darkling drearily;
She feels the chilly breath of dear, dead days
   Come sifting through the alders eerily.

Oh, how the roses riot in their bloom!
   The curtains stir as with an ancient pain;
Her old piano gleams from out the gloom
   And waits and waits her tender touch in vain.

But now her hands like moonlight brush the keys
   With velvet grace -- melodious delight;
And now a sad refrain from over seas
   Goes sobbing on the ***** of the night;

And now she sings.    (O! singer in the gloom,
   Voicing a sorrow we can ne'er express,
Here in the Farness where we few have room
   Unshamed to show our love and tenderness,

Our hearts will echo, till they beat no more,
   That song of sadness and of motherland;
And, stretched in deathless love to England's
            shore,
   Some day she'll hearken and she'll under-
       stand.)

A prima-donna in the shining past,
   But now a mother growing old and gray,
She thinks of how she held a people fast
   In thrall, and gleaned the triumphs of a day.

She sees a sea of faces like a dream;
   She sees herself a queen of song once more;
She sees lips part in rapture, eyes agleam;
   She sings as never once she sang before.

She sings a wild, sweet song that throbs with
             pain,
   The added pain of life that transcends art --
A song of home, a deep, celestial strain,
   The glorious swan-song of a dying heart.

A lame ***** comes along the railway track,
   A grizzled dog whose day is nearly done;
He passes, pauses, then comes slowly back
   And listens there -- an audience of one.

She sings -- her golden voice is passion-fraught,
   As when she charmed a thousand eager ears;
He listens trembling, and she knows it not,
   And down his hollow cheeks roll bitter tears.

She ceases and is still, as if to pray;
   There is no sound, the stars are all alight --
Only a wretch who stumbles on his way,
   Only a vagrant sobbing in the night."

The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses - Robert W. Service - 1907

"I don't smoke," she says as
I hand her a cigarette.
We collide at that table
swapping stories about regret
until the the lights have been on
for too long, and we must leave.

I know her struggle, those
familiar claws not long gone
from my own back; still
falling, wings not yet drawn,
I try to be a solid rock on which
she can rest in her throes.

Old souls unite for a brief
attempt to search the shadows
of ourselves, waterfalls of
doubt, browsing the meadows
of questions in our minds, waiting
for the rain to bloom us into answers.

His face streaked with salted war paint
Alone but breathing in his dark room camouflage
He sees her walk through the house to the back room
Before she fades into the night, a disgusting mirage

An urge for her laugh to fill the empty spaces
Stifled by the reality of solitude
It's so quiet now, nothing but the sounds
Of cars in the streets, his inner drive subdued