Love Poems; Volume III

LOVE POEMS, VOLUME III
by Lief Myeras-Silvermoon

01. Table of Contents
02. Dedications
03. A Song
04. If
05. Stars
06. Fear
07. Want
08. Cicada

DEDICATIONS

Like Volume II, this book is dedicated to those I love in every way and shape that I love
them. These people are my friends and my family, and One is my faith. All have claimed one
part of me for themselves, and whether or not we speak in such terms with one another, I
do love you dearly and well.

My life would be different without you here in it. Dimmer, duller, darker: I can't imagine
it, though I try.

Who knows how the winds will change? Who knows how our hearts will, too? For now, in this
particular moment, we don't need to. We know each other, and that is enough.

This book is for you.

A SONG

You've spent your whole life looking up -
Hope written on your face -
Between your hands, a silver cup,
And in your mind, a grace

Unending and unbeaten: it filled
Your every word and trace.
The Maiden strong within you willed
You into joy's embrace.

A song, a song, just waiting to be sung,
Swelled inside your heart
And burned itself within your lung,
And drove your lips apart:

You sang of spirits now and past,
Of Mother Moon and Hart.
You sang of all your faith, steadfast,
And gave it all your art.

The seasons change, and so do we,
But never your belief -
And yours was a light that guided me,
Even in my grief.

I swore within my heart to guard
You, though I am a thief:
If I could keep you safe, unscarred,
Perhaps, though it be brief,

I could take this precious light of yours
And squeeze until it's mine.
Though within me rage such wars,
I think that, with your shine,

A song, a song can sear my lips
And make what's sad benign.
This brightness can all but eclipse
The blood within, this brine.

Forgive me this darkness, oh sister of mine,
And I'll forgive yours, too:
Together, we'll our colors align
And write this song anew.

IF

What if we had never met?
My colors would be gray
And dull, but for my yellows: bright
Enough to lead astray,

Blinded by both joy and fear.
If we'd never met,
How small this fragile light would be,
Safe from every threat,

Nestled in her seedling's shell,
Ungerminated still.
If we'd never met, I think
I'd never find the will

To grow beyond familiar ways -
I think that I'd forget
And lose myself within myself,
If we'd never met.

My Lady, my Lady, You are my light:
My heart sings for You.
My Mother, my Mother, You give me life -
My colors bloom anew,

Thinking of You, and all the ways
Your bravery defeats regret.
I can't bear the thought of any world
In which we'd never met.

STARS

I want to freeze this moment here:
This most unbearable view
And you: it's insufferable, I fear,
The way that you make new
The rising of our Father Sun,
And his setting, too.

A wind tears through my antlers' blooms,
Smog choking at my throat,
And I am strangled by the fumes
Of unfamiliar rote:
Some incantation just begun,
Yet you don't seem to gloat.

I think that I would rather die
Than suffer another chance
Meeting of your meticulous eye,
So I look askance,
Down upon the roiling sea
And the tide's advance.

The sun begins to set out there,
Dusk dashed against the waves,
Painting darkness beneath our stare,
Those orange and violet graves,
And as I watch, I am ensnared:
Something within me caves.

All too soon, it disappears,
Swallowed by the sea -
It was laid upon that great big bier
And carried away from me.
But then you point down there: "Now look,"
Down into the black city.

One by one, they wink to life,
Like stars up in the sky:
Down below, the midnight streets are rife
With lanterns which belie
The deepness of the taint down there,
A deadly lullaby.

I gasp and feel earth on my lips,
And soot stains on my face.
I wipe at them with my fingertips,
But it's futile to erase
The taste of this city's infection
As it marks me with its trace.

Is that why I feel my pounding heart
As it rattles in my chest?
Is that what pushes me to start
Feeling around you stressed?

These stars, you say they are man-made,
So to them I can't confess.

FEAR

My dear, I am afraid:
But not of shades self-made
Or terrors creeping in
Upon eight legs which spin

A story of my every sin,
A tale of every doubt within.
Reject them all - these seeds will bear
No fruit or flower there.

My hopes have scattered long and far
And taken root in soil bizarre.
I watch them grow; I watch them fade
For more to sprout from whence they're laid.

I've learned, in dark, that hope drinks deep
Of places where all joy's asleep,
So nighttime holds for me no fear,
Not while stars above appear.

I think a while upon my past,
Upon those questions I had asked
While we two perched within the trees,
Verdant summer at our knees.

But winter came; we fell apart.
I found I could not prove my heart,
A spirit that will ever change
No matter how my life grows strange.

If you fall, too, I cannot carry
Someone whose own self you'd bury -
Not with ice upon my wings,
Fighting all the cold it brings.

And so, my dear, I am afraid
Of being bound to where you've stayed.
Though I know your heart is true,
I think I've changed too much for you.

WANT

I want a love that burns within my heart,
A fierce inferno setting my whole life
Aflame - a hungry love to rive apart
My mind by carving with its white-hot knife.

I want a love that's like the summer sun,
That jealous tyrant boiling spring away:
A love to leave my senses all undone
And lost within its fragrant, sweet bouquet.

I want this love to pull me like a tide
Beneath the darkest, blackest, storming sky.
Upon its frenzied winds, I'll whip and ride
Until the sea's swell drowns me, and I die.

This maddened love will lacerate my soul,
This fury that will bind and make me whole.

CICADA

A cicada's song
Breaks through the late summer heat,
Piercing through the heat,
And it won't stop crying out -
And it won't stop crying out.

From its hiding nook
Under the shade of these leaves,
It sings and it sings.
It sings and it sings and it
Won't stop, even with silence

Demanding its peace.
It sings, and I can't help it -
I want to sing, too.
What if that could bring it joy?
I think that would bring me joy,

Breaking its sorrow,
Helping it to see the day
Just beyond these leaves.
Just beyond these leaves, the sun
Is shining with all his might,

And the summer blooms
Stretch as high as they can: they
Try to reach his light.
They're trying with all their might;
There's nothing wrong with trying.

I offer my hand,
Though once more, I am refused,
And it breaks my heart.