My palms rest
Upon the blackened trunk
Of a melancholy hawthorn
It's choked wood crumbling
Into dust
Falling between my fingers

I rest the side of my face
My good ear listening
For the tree's whispered secrets...

Through the tunnels of my ear
The plucking of a lute...
The kind voice of a lone minstrel....
Is echoed in every
Corner of my mind
Promising eternal memory

The minstrel sits under a tree
The same tree whose burned
Breast stands against my face
Only a thousand years in the past
When the hawthorns skin
Was a gold brown tan
Fresh and beautiful
When pink and white blossoms
Grew amongst its green leaves
Fresh and beautiful
When the young hawthorn's
Memory was still young
Fresh and beautiful....

The old minstrel
sat with his gnarled back
Against the hawthorn's body
Willow wood lute in hand
Face lined with
Twelve thousand wrinkles
White beard long and weathered
Old eyes conversing
With the overhanging branches

The old minstrel plucks the
Gut strings of his lute
As if plucking kisses
From a **** lover...
The lute
Being the minstrel's
Only companion
So many years....
Returning from the hawthorn's
Memory of the past
It drew tears from
My closed eyes

I kiss the burned
Body of the old tree...
Tasting ashes on my wet lips

I embrace the tree
All my love pouring through
This embrace
As if we were making love
Under the stormy
Smoky sky

With the ending sighs
Of my lungs
The hawthorn's
Last flow of water
The remaining embers
Burning black and blood red
Engulf both our bodies
Our wailing voices
Echoing for days....

All that is left
Two piles
Of gray ashes
One to keep the other company
In this melancholy
World....

I walked down the quiet roads filled with daffodils
Our feelings merged and made a beautiful green
The lamppost stood there, sighing, waiting
Waiting for my silhouette like everyday in the evening

The rain fought with the breeze for my longing touch
Drops flirted with my hair and merged into dew
Water caressed in through my parted lips
And I tasted, bland, reminiscent of how I feel without you.

Were only smiles the chosen currency,
You'd make me quite the richest man alive;
Would only pride bring power unto me,
I'd live a tsar, a King by who I wive;

Yet do you not these feelings share for me,
The man who so adores you as his bride?
Do not the comforts of a monarch please
His treasury, his sceptre, throne and tide?

For if those fleeting smiles are insincere,
Then not a single gem belongs to me;
And if your love for me is as I fear,
Then I am ruler of a barren sea.

For though you swell my heart without denial,
It is for naught if I can't make you smile.

A woman like the sea -
So strong and full of life
Yet every bit as calming.
Even through the crashing waves,
Reducing sails to shrapnel,
Tumbling and ruined,
The next day she murmurs,
Calm and playful.
The livelihood of all.

And I her shore -
Always steadfast, always faithful,
Yet not without my jagged edges,
Lifeless, unforgiving tracts,
But tenfold open spaces
Waiting for the tide.
Yet no matter how unmoving,
With time, and her most gentle grace,
The tallest mountains turn to valleys.

And though the two are so opposed,
The one cannot exist apart:
What is a shore without his sea,
But barren, empty land, alone?
And what is ocean without land
But unforgiving, cold, and formless?

Oh, to have a woman like the sea.