( little young rose )*

It is late this day the hushed sun falls, my dying flame,
The night appears without stars, only memories of stars,
The sparkles in your dark red hair, the moon in our eyes,
Across the lake my faraway heart shudders with the loon.

I promised you a paradise of days, you gave me the night,
That we would be together in sweet fields of lamb and rose,
But now there is only wandering, now there is one long road,
Aye, tis a cruel way that a man must rove to make his keeping.

When I set myself to sea to ride the unbounded waves of loss,
I sometimes take to wheel in early morn and the blaming gulls
Surround me with the great blue of the ocean and endless sky
And I weep at the mizzen alone on oak decks, wet in misty cries.

I weep even before the rains have come as they always gather,
Dark and cold in the maelstroms and whirlpools of oceans deep,
To know the seven seas of the globe and not be with my dove—
She with eyes, vast and blue as ocean, with hair of the setting sun.

It is too much to bare, the endless silence in the fury of my travels,
If only I was a merchant, a steward, a lord, even the lolling tinker,
Such a house I would build for us in the ***** of clear lake wood
And we would have such charming brood, enough to quiet the loon.