Sorrow

Sorrow is the heart, a beast,
a sparrow turned away
from you,

from the face,
of the sun
still warming

the empty cage
in the room of my ribs.
And the river

which ran so freely,
now knows its name,

oh sorrow,

oh dear heart,
dear beast,
dear sun.

Let me never forget,
your warmth,
your face,
your river.

We are an empty cage
here in the room of ribs.

I can't bear to see your face
right now, sun, oh sun.
How I loved you.

And from here
who knows what strange steps
we will take. My anchor pulled,
off I drift

in a boat
warm with sorrow
sparrow face,
a river
unable to carry you.

For Magnolia


Every blossom like lips,
like snow,
faint blushed,
has a unique
personality.

Like love,
murmured over
and over,

like pain,
to be so beautiful
for oh,
so short a time
as this,

my favorite,
my joy,
light,
dream.

I bow to you,
in yellow licks
in beams,
in torrents,
in ice thrown savagely,

you grin,
you open,
you drip your beauty,
you widen your mouth,
and lose your tongue.

If I so in love with you,
should pick up each lost part,
tenderly, offer them
to the sky--

and clouds come over me,
and clouds,
come over me,

I wither with you.
I will hold you
until you becoming my thought
turn once more

transparent
and invisible.



for the tree in the front yard

after Keats

Aloft and silent,
they must be stars with crystal heads
turning in stillness
above our burning
and our love,

no words or utterance
can show this feeling,
how tender the sparse life
ended,

whose words, young
and hardly tried
do still live among us.

I too love the young man,
though tragically lost
amid his own heart's theft

willingly given,
a woman washed by grief
reminds my own treasured losses

and here we sit holding ourselves
in the words of a passionate
spirit, young and not knowing

his fame. Old treatments and cold
sped him off from our world
yet not so far

nor unlit,
to be forgotten.






c2010 T.L. Stokes