Liberty perched on a pedestal
balancing progress and evil
Holding high the palm of peace
over those who hold it so dear

But peace comes dropping too slowly
with all due respect to you, William
An unsettled and urgent promise
cloistered within vows of possibility

Willing victim of romantic culture
betrayed by the keeper of souls
Romance is no idle distraction
Intimacy, a vocation

Long afflicted by...
the sounds of music
the scent of linden blossoms
the taste of sea salted skin
the feel of sultry midnight air
the sight of sun through closed eyes...

Dreams once silently withering
liberated to wander freely
Uprooted from the stagnation
of emotionally depleted soil

Transplanted to aimlessness
where all roads lead to roam
Preferring the role of explorer
to the vagrancy of a lost soul

Strolling through this beautiful city
as having traveled throughout life
Observing without participation
part of a whole yet not wholly a part

An accomplished failure on a quest
to achieve simplicity of purpose
To savor those moments of stray peace
that ephemerally cross this path

...all the whilst searching for that bee loud glade