Unnamed Elements

In onyx oceans of night you impress

Soft on my pillow and deep in my heart

Whispers of something I cannot caress

Murmur of yearning’s intangible art

Spring rends the air with desire and dreaming

Summer exhales to the garden its bloom

Autumn dons tresses of bronze-gilded gleaming

Darling, is winter heaven’s waiting room?

I cannot name this unspoken design

Where having and holding and hoping align

Time is a troubadour, ruthless and keen

Ageless, yet in its allotment of years

It unravels hours from gossamer skein

Kissing our faces with laughter and tears

We cannot see its outstretched fingers clasp

The delicate thread of mortality

Fading to naught; an ephemeral gasp

Before we step into eternity

But deeper than utterance in the heart’s crypt

Love pens its longing in thought’s shadow-script

Darkness cannot veil haunting heart-hunger

Arms cannot hold midnight moments of mist

We chased the wind too, when we were younger

For unnamed tidings that do not exist

Now, though our will in finest apparel

Touts golden wisdom, humbly we concede

Having and holding is the shallow temporal

Before heaven satisfies our last need

Darling, I love you and there is no shame

In bearing love’s longings that we cannot name

© Janet Martin

I am unable to upload photos right now due to technical problems.