Though Unrequited

1

Your tulip smiles are each a dawn and
a patient magic is soft on your fingertips,
dancing delicately upon your command.
You are there in the feathery heights each time
my eyes learn the moon and your voice sighs
from each fragrance of the tickling breeze — you
are a sly cloud which drifts through my hymns
and I deepen through the shimmer of its flavor.
(Your midnight waltzes through the center of my
desire quiet the faltering of my dreams.)

2

Within your eyes there is an immortal rose
whose every petal balances the dew of dawn
in rhythm with stillness. Falling stars imagine
a home within you (the snow, a Christmas) and
every solitude I furl into my prayers climbs
above the steeples of fantasy awaiting the why.
Hues of sanctuary echo from your every yes,
and each no is a mirror held to my sanity.
There is no hope which flutters more endearing
than the breath of your silver wondering.

3

You are a rain of awakening when the night
has blurred the edges of meaning.
And this is love which has cast me aloft
in the gentle sift of the moon’s hourglass.
(And this is need which has collapsed
the tumblers of my every instinct until the
constant rhyme of your image is the only
page my soul can read.) No fable can reduce
the claim of my logic to a lesser unfolding.
No death is more eternal than your whisper.

*   *   *

Far

Where did I see you? I never saw you.
When your sigh haunted the forests of Heaven,
I fell bottomless. The lower curve of your eye
flew on a dove’s wing one Autumn
when the leaves stilled their breaths to the
hint of your passing. Flight is your touch’s toy.
Your fingers unearthed a depth my understanding
yet kneels to drink, there in the starry
mountain sky as rose petals fluttered endlessly
from your fingertips. I inhaled the
echo of your look, the page of my spirit
I cannot help but rhyme into my every breath.
Where did I see you? I never saw you. Slower
than a dream I gazed into your eyes, but you
were a vision of a farther dreamer than myself.

– John H. Doe