days of softness summer

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

in days of softness summer sings
it’s varicolored chorus;
the bright life essence solstice brings
the sharp relief in minor things
through light we’re opened, porous

in moments of recumbency
we find our missing ardor;
the worried minutes hours flee
and all the lost, the you the me
invoke the sacred charter

in days of softness summer sighs
its song of sweet enchanting;
if love came first we’d realize
that tenderness is right and wise
and summer, time for planting —
the seeds, our lifetime’s
granting

He Fell In Love With Summer Nights

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

He fell in love with summer nights
The year of the exploding dawn
The ecstasy, the endless flights,
The morning’s crest when dark was gone

He put a ring around his pride
Athwart a line of endless lights
He came to know the man inside
And fell in love with summer nights

What She’s Like

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

She considers herself an average girl,
Who’s led a sort of mundane life:
This model-scientist-dancer-preacher
Who I happen to call my wife —

She was an entrepreneur for years;
She’s a volunteer when she sees a need:
She’s been a mother, a grandmother now,
And there’s not enough hours for her to read

All the books that we have, or she wants to have.
She’s curious and inquisitive;
She defends anyone who is ganged up on,
And knows, and believes, what it is to forgive —

She loves to move and she loves to laugh,
And she always gives comfort to those who mourn:
She as wonder-filled as the sea and the sky,
And’s had love in her heart since the day she was born —

She loves to come up with a better idea;
She lives to watch dramas that come from Korea,
She worries about the strange man that she wed,
But after a day, when it’s all done and said,

She closes the eyes on that beautiful face
Having made the world, my world, a much better place;
And I think, every morning, as I move the cover,
I can never quite say just how deeply

I love her

by these candles

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

so many visions fractured, things
i don’t remember making,
ideas formed before
i knew to say, “remember
that you made these.”
lost and broken

so now, the days of aging,
not a super-sleuth or power-broker,
just a group of limitations
smelling like
the summer came too soon.

i see, though, now
that what is not ideal
can still be interesting;
and that where
warm small moments flow
they flow for you and me

so close your eyes, lay back
and let me trace along with fingertips
the outline of
the pressures you have lived,
those long inhabitants

let me release them from your skin,
for though we need not trade the good for bad,
we can accept the good,
when all the moments
just become the one
this moment
for all time

and by these candles
let us turn to smoke
to smoke and water blending
liquid light
that burns and

rises higher

The Only One

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

I sometimes have to sit and think
Who all they were, and when they were;
A kind of map of who I’ve been
Or GPS, if you prefer —

But there’s a difference with the one,
She always with me, wake or sleep;
I tell myself I’ll move along,
But it’s a promise I can’t keep

And so I go my lying way,
A person seen, but incomplete:
I always have these hidden thoughts,
A waking garden — thick, replete —

It’s strange. I should be wiser now,
But this, at least, spells out no doom:
The only one I can’t forget
Is here, but in

The other room

9 Love Poems – 9

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

Bring me the night and you, and I need little more,
For nothing else intoxicates like this:
A realm of learnings, carried by uncommon core;
The many-volumed novel in a kiss

The lingering, a candle slow to burn the wick;
The curvature that’s well known to the touch —
The slightest little turn that finally does the trick,
The final gear that doesn’t need the clutch

A night and you, it’s all and it is everything:
A time for hearts to find the extra beats —
The sunrise waits to see what wonders we will bring,
A paradise of tangling and sheets

  Our wine is so much more than just a fancy cup:
  For where the night gives off, we’re only starting up

9 Love Poems – 8

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

If decent words made perfect days,
Then all these verses would create
No hesitance between us now.
But such is not the world, or fate:
For while it’s true that love is much,
It can’t be everything, as such.
I see the fear upon your brow,
And worry that, one day, it stays.

To come together — pull apart —
This is the breathing cycle of
All things that with true meaning live:
Like people, friendships, fam’lies, love —
I wish, at times, it was not so.
This respiration, ebb-and-flow:
The taking off when you would give,
That stretches, frays, and wounds the heart.

Acceptance may be wisdom, true,
And love be more like gardening:
To know to wait when it is time
For balancing, or pardoning,
Or finding spaces in our words
For what, unspoken, must be heard —
That love knows boundaries. For I’m
Uncertain as to me and you,
Except, to know what I should do —

To wait ’til you come back to me,
If that day ever

Comes