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For the lost


Photo by permission of Melinda Faith Spanier
For Melinda Faith Spanier; sometimes it would be easier to cry for others than to write, but tears won't come.

For the lost


I came to see you once, but you weren't there;
I called a little longer than I should.
I watched you from the bottom of the stair,
wondering if you'd be the way you could -
but no, another stays, and steals your mind,
taking away the things I fought to hold,
making the visit fiction so unkind,
and all the hope I held is ashen-cold;
burnt in the fitful wind that blew us down.
Lost in the aching void of being there;
watching a woman slowly droop and drown,
not with a shout or scowl, but just a stare
looking on life denied, not worth the fight -
when robbed of what was once a shining light.

Once there was love and laughter every day -
not much to eat, but love; love fed my mind;
and when at last you lost your lonely way,
and knew that cruellest of all was kind,
yours were the tears; I stayed them so you'd smile,
thinking that I would eat, and grow, and learn -
but tears were locked inside me all the while,
and there was never anywhere to turn.
I tried the law, when tall enough to hold
the hand the courts supplied to plead my case;
but then the lawyers quickly made me old,
and all the while the threat I had to face
was prying eyes and cold contempt from he
who shouted in my face, to cower me.

Well after all the lies and pompous talk,
at least they said I'd see you; just a bit.
How I desired once again to walk
through life with joy, where once I had to sit
through years of doleful desolation days
not seeing you; not knowing how you were.
I longed to love you ever in the ways
we'd known; but what came next could not occur
to little minds in single digit years.
Finding another lover you could hold,
he turned out worse than all your previous fears -
and now you lived your life as if you'd sold
your soul, to one who held it whole in chains,
as if such things as captive souls, were gains.

I came to see you once, but you weren't there.
And now I cannot find me anywhere.


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