Poetry

The Braid

You cut me to the core
With your drawn out silences.
But I hold up my end of this sagging bridge
With bits of levity and snippets of
Whatever I can dredge up in a moment,
Even as you depress the conversation
With your gravity as you used to do,
As I am used to you.

The blue sky wide and the open road,
The wind was a world standing still as we danced.
Stolen Moments of a secreted summer,
The heat was lost into the night.
The sun sets on the dearest dreams
Burns crimson hues of Autumn Leaves,
But I remember in ashes this evergreen grove
Even as you decide the stroke of Midnight.

You sing to him thoughts that will not stay
Caged within your scars.
A mated pair reduced to one,
This love still shared wilts petal
By petal in your solitary moments.
If only you could only bear to release
These treasures that were once your dreams
And believe that they'd return in the spring.

Friends counsel you to give up your spent hopes,
And you long to find a way to explain
What was meant to be, what it all means to you now,
How it wasn't for a destination but a journey;
Explain to them how Arthur sent his best knights
In search of the ever after,
How easily you picked up this mantel,
How worthwhile the Grail.

You, trapped inside the shell of a dream
You shed long ago, working to break out of
A quarter century of somebody else's life.
A phoenix about to burst into the world.
Here in your most vulnerable moments
I wonder if the stars are red or blue.
The Tarot could fall either way
With the Turn and the River to come.

I am content to be Sancho Panza
As you triumph over windmills,
Bend my days to intertwine with yours
In hopes that the City of Gold lies just beyond.
And here three paths run parallel
Different loves as any could be
In me three threads merge into one
This braid is all and more and me.