"To Her" or "Ladyfair"
To Her
Dearest, fondest one to my heart
My eyes do beweep themselves on thought of you alone
There are not many things I could say to you
That have not been said a thousand times before
To the women of old,
Ageless Aphrodites, Artemises, and Athenas
for whom the stars hold ever their light
Of Helen, Elizabeth, Cleopatra, and Joan,
My Lady Godiva, my Queen of Sheba --
Fear not of your impending immortality in the hearts of Man,
early found in the fountain of my youthful memory
You are the Madonna, twisted and broken,
clutching at your cherubic cherished chosen son,
refracting golden rays even in the oceans of sorrow you can no longer feel lost in
You are power.
You are justice.
You are emptiness.
You are longing.
I love you still.
As I lay in the haze of this age,
Drifting motionless but for the workings of my motion-picture theater mind,
as the sunshine you showed me how to see drips nigh toward the horizon,
I think only of you,
My most darling, incredible gift.
I think only of the dawn,
Never of my current twilight.
The morning of the day I met you
The afternoon I held you near and heard you breathe a dream --
Saccharine silver
The starlight we drank and the breezes we moved to shake the fields and hide our words
And your eyes,
Baubles of umber fire
Jewels of hickory rain
I never could have made it out alive.
As you enfold me now,
My beauty has long faded,
My once-amber waves of hair are cut away by the sickle of time.
I keep no jewelry, I hold no color, nothing at all
But you are ablaze.
You have never dimmed.
You stand in the battlefied, flag raised high
You leap in the night, celestial bow poised ever-ready
Your flowing locks affords you no modesty
as you fly in the streets, illuminated by the morning rays
You are everything to me.
At this moment,
This moment of all and none at once,
I can only see you.
And smile.
And close my eyes.
Thank you.