Deep throated thunder rolls across the plains,
While swollen clouds, ignoring time of day,
Create false night to steal the light away,
And scatter on the ground their mottled stains.
Once more I must experience the pains
We suffered during that malicious May,
As, in my head, I watch the movie play
The remnant of your smile amidst the rains.
But no. This time, it isn’t you who leaves
To serve your country under foreign suns.
Instead we stay and play among the sheaves.
We stop, lay down and breathe each other’s breath.
We wonder who would end this love that runs;
And no-one can, perhaps not even death.
March 2013
This is my submission to the Oldie Competition in its April 2013 edition. The challenge was to write a poem with the following last words for each line - plains, day, away, stains, pains, May, play, rains, leaves, suns, sheaves, breath, runs, death. No further guidance or instruction was given. With fourteen lines and a distinctive rhyme scheme, I wrote it as a sonnet.
An impending storm re-creates for the narrator the conditions when they were parted from their lover and forces another painful re-living of the memory. The lover is lost and gone forever, but recalling it this time the story changes and shows how it should, or would, have been.
No success this time, but it won't stop me trying again.