A Cage To Hold My Dreams
Setting The Birds Singing
Dare I write what occupies my mind when
I am alone ? Is it wise to reveal to anyone
the longing in my heart ?
She must not know how acutely I ache
for her, or how robbed I am of all desire
to write except about her.
The plight of the world or the wonders of
nature, or other themes which excited me
before, sadly, now leave me unmoved.
I am drowning in love, scalded with longing,
anxious and delusional.
I sit in the shade, pen in hand, silent and
soulful, and she is on the blank page
in front of me, and in my bath,
and on the carriage of my typewriter,
and perched on a branch at the end of
my garden. I gaze out the window on a
train or from the back seat of a car
and she is outside, she watches me like
a cat, she smiles through the glass,
she is perfection.
If, like me, your happiness is built on
fantasy, every morsel of joy becomes
a stack of gold. A peck on the cheek
secures the jackpot,
a tender word can set the birds singing.
Her scent lingering on a pillow,
a cup with lipstick smears,
a Christmas card she signed 'with love',
these little things lift my spirit,
and love completes the damage by
turning them into miracles.
But perhaps it is better that she doesn't
love me, for if she did
and then stopped, I would want to drive
my car at a concrete bridge.
I would want to lie there, mangled,
unrescued, until the last breath had left
my body. As the craftsman feels about
his tools and the writer for his words,
love is what I have for Celia, true love
and an imprisoned heart which
hates the thought of ever being free.
