To be a poet
Is not to burn the paper with your words
but to be heard
when drifting smoke of love and life is gone
the poet in us carries on
when ink and page and pen are embers
it is the beauty one remembers

Winter's yellow hound
snores
bats an ear in sleep
with ancient claws
drool from his gums
pools on his paws
as he yawns
and thaws

Most prison walls
are not made of stone
the thickest ones
are flesh and bone

The embankment is a river
of bottles in the sun
I've held them and I've kissed them
every single one

Today
I gave away your cocktail dress
it was black and fitted
I kept it for thirty years
but I never found the shoes
they were too big to fill

In time I will become a beach
an hourglass of falling sand
when eighty tides have washed my face
my youth will be a foreign land
and the laughing girl that once I knew
will be waving from the distance
across that sea that joins us two

Walk with me a while
give me one last kiss on parting
good friends and lovers
secretly and silently entwined
yet I am ever thought as old
and you a young and pretty thing
winter sighs a final breath
and bends to kiss the hand of spring