When Life's darkest clouds gather over me,
I seek shelter from impending storms;
Curtains are drawn closed, all the doors secured ---
And soon Life's grotesque profile transforms

Darkness spreads its arms like a faithful friend,
Offering comfort and asylum here;
(I'd rather not see what lurks in the light --
What we can't see we tend not to fear)

In my solitude, peace and harmony
Join to banish thoughts of bitterness;
Soon yesterday's pains fade and slip away ---
Precious gift of sweet Forgetfulness!

And should the anguish prove unbearable
My beleaguered soul succumbs to prayer;
Please, don't pity me . . . I've been here before . . .
Misery always seeks its darkest lair

But I find that Time, with its healing hands
Soothes and calms the tempests of the mind,
And from my shelter I emerge, renewed,
Leaving Life's most loathsome hours behind

It was bad as I always imagined
Honey no longer tastes sweet
All who partake intoxicated
Words melted in the midday heat
Illusions beyond comprehension
Evoking apparitions from a fleeting flashback
Fragments claimed in the light of day
Painted my world in shades of black
I could only watch colors fade
Charismatic allure had me paralyzed
Energy spent transformed into tears
Crossed paths unrecognized
Time has not dwindled intensity
Feeling depth exceeding all measure
Defined by despondent devotion
You no longer bring body pleasure
I dream a life free from anchors
The shadows darkening the air
In moonlight images my skin unblemished
Make-believe scars were never there

MAKING THE MOMENT

Memory nails
one piece of time

against another
piece of time

until it bears
some ramshackle  resemblance

to the exact
moment.

Memory has left things out.
Memory has put many more  things in.

But for what it is worth
it could...pass for...the moment.

The sense suffices.

A hedgehog creeps slowly
across the bottom of the garden

as if it were in
a universe of its own.

A crow caws
across a sky

as if it were creating it
with its cry.

Well, well, so...
here I am again.

Sorta.
Kinda.

And here you are again.
Alive.

Not dead.

You flicker through
all the faces you

have ever been.

But bit by bit
time slips

and the moment
comes apart.

I stare into the nothing
you have become.

And my mind builds
and rebuilds

this exact moment.

Nailing one bit of time
foolishly to yet another.

Making the moment.
forever.

*
What the mind elects to remember....this tiny moment of not-much-ness gets played and replayed...yet it holds him as he smiles and turns to say something and then....he is gone yet again...and I can't remember what it was he was going to say only that he said it to me and every little second of him is precious...even this insignificant little thing that should have vanished.

Strangely enough there are three different times in this one moment....there is the hedgehog on his journey across his little world...then the crow dragging the sky across our vision...then just Brian standing against the window that looks out upon that sky...that garden...but memory elects to combine them all as happening at the one and the same time...the only common thing being his smile(as always)and his lovely laughter. A tiny moment made out of nothing at all and yet is the seed of everything I love.

Three tabbies sitting on my lap
Butterfly flutters then perch on my forehead
Ahh...Nature's loyalty right at my doorstep

Is better,
Than a bitter truth,
If it saves a marriage,
Or a life.
29/6/2024