The Heart Reader

There is no way... not word or sign...

To convey this love of mine...

Even part.

But there is little need to tell

For you always read... so well...

My heart.

I watched you die

And something of me

Went with you.

My words came back

To my own ears

When you could not hear

And the pressure

Met no response

And fell empty

At my side.

Yet, you took

A part of me

When hands

And voice

Were not enough

To reach across

The widening gap.

The part

Of my heart

That was yours

Found the way

To reach

And follow you

Into death.

The Sounds of Love

So soft, the sounds of love, I didn't hear its coming,

There was only quiet warmth and peace

To tell of love's arrival.  I had not looked for these,

Nor listened well to catch such muted sounds.

Love's words were not really words at all,

But sunlight streaming on my heart,

Making all dear things the dearer still,

Where love abounds.

I believed great sounds would herald love,

Not words too soft to hear above the crowded roar

Of life, more complicated grown,

With every passing hour.

Love's words lost in a million voices

But found in a silence understood,

It spoke to me through all things loved,

So vast its wondrous power.

Paradise

I, too believe...

We take nothing when we leave,

But instead...

Send our lovely dreams ahead,

Watching them again, unfold

Is to walk on streets of gold.

My Heart by Candlelight

Who said the light of noon is merciless?

No so... not so... my heart declares

For dreams safe hidden by the day

Blaze out in candle flares.

A golden wash of sunlight bathes,

With brightness to disguise,

My hurting, broken, useless heart

From curious, probing eyes.

Before the lighted taper's glow

My guarded pride grows lax;

My firm resolves of noontime

Melt like candle wax

And fall before my dreaming...

Saucered in the night...

As the sputtering flames lay bare

My heart by candlelight.

The Clown

A smile hung, ugly and empty,

Perched so hideously there,

Suspended from great gobs of grease paint,

Matted on hopeless despair;

Draped against eyes sometimes prying;

Hiding last crumbs of a dream

While rivulets of tears smudge the laugh lines

And life falls apart at the seam.

Fate as twisted and mocking;

As empty and useless a thing

As the grin painted onto the heartbreak

Cavorting about in the ring.

Dreams ballooning about him,

Bursting to thunderous applause,

He laughs as the world falls about him

And dies in his circus of straws.