A Sonnet on Learning

On 2020102520201024 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments

She said to me: “Come now, you owe me one,”
And bid me not to worry. She would show
Me how to do these things I’d never done;
Just how to pay the debt I’d come to owe —

And slowly, like a child that learns to crawl,
I inched along the traces of her ground:
She gave off teaching and surrendered all,
Her measured breathing changed to quick’ning sound

To give herself completely to my trust,
And only on her pleasure then to dwell;
To move in slightest ways so to adjust,
To find her shining as last moments fell —

The lesson learned to be used, then, in living:
Receiving finds its fullest mark, in giving

Adair

On 2020100320201001 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

Across the span of love and space,
I see her young, her vibrancy;
A sister of tomorrows that
She was not fated far to see —

But yet: within each perfect sky
My heart and eyes can feel her there,
In days that say that life is good,
And some of that is still

Adair

Second Kiss

On 2020083020200830 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

The first kiss was a trial run;
The second kiss, we meant it —
Our eyes had locked that certain way,
And nothing could prevent it

The fear and worry that we had
The spark would just be missing —
That disappeared the second time
That we resumed
Our kissing

where flows the living stream

On 2020082320200823 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

but when he died,
we stopped;
for those who knew,
found wordless were their thoughts.

does music live,
when those who made it are gone?
or is it merely a ghost,
a fading echo of what was once living?

there was a day,
a strong-remembered afternoon,
with the smell of cooking vegetables and spices.
on that day,
we gathered for the music and the water:
where flows the living stream,
we ride the current.

now, bereft,
a fountain:
today, within,
an abandoned mainspring —

when music flowed like water,
we were alive, we were alive,

we were

at peace

Snapshot: Breakup

On 2020072620200725 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

she asked,
what do you really want?
i said,
i’m sure i do not know.

she stared out at the endless sea,
and watched the wavelets come and go

and as the summer turned a page,
the daylight dimmed as by a switch –
and love grew old, or maybe me —
i still cannot remember
which

Snapshot: On Bikes

On 2020072620200725 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

We drove around on rented bikes

(Though she had decorated hers)

And laughed until our sides got sore

And we could barely pedal

Anymore

snowshots

On 2020071920200719 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

you took your camera out into the snow
with joy upon your face of twenty-three,
and laughter swelled upon the fields in drifts
and rang across the hollow through the smoke

from chimneys up and down the backyard way,
as images of icicles and frost
and crystalline embodiments you shot,
in days before you’d ever know how good

a picture was, until developing
the film, you’d see if any was worth much
of anything worth keeping then for viewing,
it all was feel, and happenstance, and chance,

just like a snowfall in a southern winter,
just like a day of laughter in the snow,
just like a memory that’s slowly fading,
your words, your face, your laughter, and your voice

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