j.lewis Verse-Virtual 2019 May

May 2019

Author’s note: As a young boy, I dreamed of being a poet. As a teen, I dreamed of love. As an old man, I dream of being young and in love. The first two poems are straight up love poems, both formal and metrical, which I don’t write very often. The last two are just reflections on the kinds of things I dream and think about.

All My Years to Come

Night does not fall without some thought of you,
nor sun rise after sleep without the same.
As easily as comes each minute's breath
unbidden, so your memory plays beneath
the consciousness of life that lately came
across the tedious toil that I knew.

The years that knew you not are not undone,
but unimportant since you stood before
me, hand outstretched to bridge the dreary stream
of every day's alikeness where each dream
that rose toward me died against the shore;
I feared, like all those visions, to be gone.

But for your hands that reached to ease me from
life's river in its muddy rolling rush
the current would have swept me all away
and turned to darkness what was only gray.
Now expectations that within me push
the river back, will lead me also home,
And I will give you all my years to come.

And If I Dream

Some fear and some, unquestioning, desire
that undiscovered country from whose bourn
no traveler returns. They halt or haste
to dreams they do not know--a desert waste
or sweet oasis waiting in its turn,
celestial burnings or damnation's fire.

I feel no fear, sense no undue attraction
to that land, that world of rumored night.
And when I make that pilgrimage at last,
what dreams may come will never be surpassed
by any colors bolder or more bright
than those created by our long affection.

The brush and oils borrowed from the days
of you and I, our pleasure and our pain,
will paint the details of a quiet glance,
a look, a touch, a slow and passioned dance
for all to see. The closeness that we gain
through love, encanvassed there, forever stays.

lake fog

i felt it in my sleep
lake fog laying siege
to near-defenseless thoughts

no dainty creeping in
on little cat-feet
the voracious mist
reeked of dead fish
and lost dreams
accused me of wasted days
forgotten loves
life half-lived
and hidden sorrows

sundown

across the quiet collected dust
of this familiar window sill
the sun comes slowly down
resting before he says goodnight
to the patterned rooftops
the forested horizon

we both will sleep tonight,
though only i will dream
younger times, lighter cares
countless future days
for all that might yet come

then with earth's endless spin
will come the dawn
sun and i will wake
he with singular purpose
i with singular sorrow
for roads not taken
love and lovers lost
a singular sorrow that melts
beneath the sun's new gaze

until sundown repeats
and the window sill whispers
how long, old man
how long do we have left?

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