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Cry a Little

by John Stocks


Imagine
You were the one
Whose name sounded sweeter
Than spring or lark song
All through that long and bitter winter.

Can you remember the artist
Who tried and failed to capture
The pulsing essence of your soul,
Your zest for life, your bubbling rapture,
Who aspired to be the Miller to your Monroe?

Then imagine
A dark age of unknowing,
A crimson tide of springs’
Time, relentlessly flowing
Summers, frost-scarred winters,
The slow drift of countless moons,
Trespasses forgiven; your beauty hidden
Under ceaseless drifts of silence.

And imagine how,
After twenty-four years
Of laughter, love and tears
We sit with two friendly ghosts:
Our shadows,
Or how we remember them
Still with their destiny undefined,
Unsullied by the teasing trickster time,
Breathing in our sleeping, waking dreams
Forever locked in a distant space
In the land of ‘might have beens’.


Copyright © 2013 by John Stocks

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