Love Poem: A Missive For Yul
David Smalling Avatar
Written by: David Smalling

A Missive For Yul

Child, when you begin to remember, whose memory
Do you remember best? Is the one told to you by bias
Art, and reinforced by a contentious history?
Is it the one imagined while we are apart, the pale Judas
Of all grieving heart? Or did you take time to scan
The logic in your head again, the silver in your hand
Before you plait my crown of thorns, or exiled me
To drink the hemlock drops squeezed from insecurity?

I have some blame, for justice cannot deny my sin
But when to priest ot Pharisee you render praise
Scroll for my motives, read the simple schema within
Look at my life, see what was doled to me. My ways
My dear was a mocking, scourging path to tread
And all for the love that alienated me. Heaven made
A dark cloud of no greater, and more terrible dread
Than the heart in which sweet adoration petals fade.

The flowers fall, and the brambled thorns left behind
I wear with stoic grace. Praying for you each scentless
Day, the rope will rot before your soft, sightless mind
And the measure of my worth without wan bitterness
Will be the soul's desire to love, promised intention
Unspoken while stammering crowds howl their madness
Baying at a serene moon. Jealousy is pride's invention
Truth wears humility in the saged silence of its sadness.