Early 2010 and the poet is apprehensive that he has waited too long to unburden his heart.
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how shall I find you if I am late to the garden
and all the wanderers and fragrant blossoms
are already taken, to be carried far away,
leaving me in a dull grey silence, alone.
alone like a solitary stone on a trackless shore
amidst infinite grains of sand, abandoned,
to wait for the next ten thousand years
to be broken down to fit into the beach.
I have come to understand the poison
of silence, the violence of solitude, the grim
and dim diminution of hope and joy and love.
black diamond to the arrogant sandstone
where even the quartz cracks and wears
in the face of a greater hardness.
how shall I find you if I am late to the garden
and there is not even the track of bare feet
left on the dry and pocked rocks
to serve as a clue of where you stood
waiting for me, but I was slow to arrive
and you chose to believe I was not coming,
that the fates had mocked you once more
and that I was an agent of pain and regret.
I will sit amongst these stones and weep,
my tears proving only my sorrow and solitude.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.