Love's Compass Rose
Love's Compass Rose
( Valentine Poem 2018)
From the East we set out,
Gathering steam;
A rising sun ignites
The birth of the dream,
Celestial fire lights
The path of youthful love,
Finding its way upon
The blinding heights
Of Spring's unbounded passions.
Heedless we, by days and nights
Of Destiny or Destination.
Then moved by Nature's own determination,
To the South we turned
Our yet-young steps,
Down to where the long Summer burned
And bloomed, and its tendrils crept
Alongside all the way,
And sometimes caught
And slowed our tread -
Yet still we strode, all down the day
Arm weaved in arm
We held each other sway
Until the Summer gave us all Her best.
And then we turned us to the West;
Where now we wend our careful way
Through the land of gold and red
Where the taste of cold hangs in the day
And what is said and left unsaid
Colors all the cooling air
And draws us nearer, step by step
To the silent North
As it paints the frostlines in our hair.
Now I would not wish to be a boy again;
Thou art now to me more passing fair
Then thou wert to me before, and so...
In the end it's to the North we go,
Up high above, to the silent land
Where the diamonds of the sky shine true
Where together we shall stop and stand
Thee with me, and I with you
And review all things which we have done,
And call it good, as the night comes down
To wrap us in its starry arms.
And in this end we will have won
The rewards of patient labor.
The Winter of the North will welcome us at last
As the present is the only child of the past
So goes the Circle, 'round and 'round.
We go around Love's Compass Rose,
With some things lost, and others found,
Wondering at the things we chose
To keep or cast aside.
And when it's done and the time is spent
If it was well done, there may be more,
There may be more betide;
We may be given to go 'round again,
To meet my Joy, my Wife, my Pride -
Somewhere South of Seventeen.
|