Cast away, cast away
Cast away your worries
Cast away your fear
Cast away your troubles
What have you to ponder?
What have you to love?
Why do you always tremble?
Tremble
Beneath the stars above

It was a well-lighted room
For candle light at least
He took her hand
And they ran
They ran...

But then she awoke
From her dreams of love
And found him gone.
He was gone, she yawned
And wiping the sleep
(Or was it a tear)
From her eye
She started some eggs.

Then suddenly she remembered
Whether it was the heat of the stove
Or the heat of the night
Or the memory of his smell
Or the smell of oregano...

She remembered it in a flash
quickly: all of his mannerisms
slowly his walk
how gentle his voice was
the soft and warm of the wind that evening

she turned off the eggs
abandoning them on the stove
and sat down in a trance
methodically she reached for
pad and paper and pen
and she wrote these words:

"Where is he?"

She blinked twice and
breathed in softly
Remembering his voice
So soft, so loving.
His eyes, so light.
As if the light of Heaven shown through them.

His hands were soft at times
Hard at others
Never used for harm, but to work
Skillfully
They were beautiful hands.

For a moment
She felt his hand on hers
But it was a dream.


Why does this dream
Seem so real?
Why do the best dreams
Always hurt in the morning?

"I love him,"
She cried to the silence
"I love him and will wait."
She waited
Years passed.
Long years.
He did not ever come.

She was still herself
Within herself,
Only alone, without passage
From the dark world
Which she built around herself.

This is not the end.



~K M Radley