Sweet hour of dawn unfolding on the air
Its whisper spawning bird-song to the breeze
The dell, a sea of mist and memories
Rousing within the heart a wordless prayer
Here pain and pleasure mutely synchronize
Surging within like only love can do
Where hunger, having, holding, missing you
Alloy; a raw and tender paradise
And I will hold you just to taste the grief
Of letting go; its ache love’s testament
As joy and sorrow, the heart’s filament
Rends and mends in bittersweet relief
For joy alone or grief cannot exist
It mingles like the morning with the mist
Moments; oh, mighty, subtle, sheer deluge
Breathing to bloom the bud-let tightly clenched
Yet nature’s roving thirst is never quenched
Its force an unrelenting subterfuge
We stoop to trace the petals on the lawn
Mourning the haste at which the hours pass
The prophets understood ‘all flesh is grass’
Our sojourn like the mist upon the dawn
The heart, a chalice for life’s offering
Runs over with the gifts that life employs
We drink its bitter gall and honeyed joys
Its beauty and its sorrow-suffering
As love, a soulful, stirring melody
Inspires us to press on faithfully
Hope in an arabesque spiral of calm
Trembles anew upon the morning brink
We cannot touch the haze of muted pink
Nor can we clasp the moments in its palm
Yet, in this gossamer incline of Time
Goodness and mercy shod each gifted hurt
And thus we laugh, willing to kiss the dirt
And thus we weep; relinquishing its rhyme
To rivers rushing out to twilight’s edge
We cannot keep, but simply touch and taste
The silver mist of mercy’s moment-haste
Before they fall like seeds beneath the sedge
Yet oh, within its beck I’ve come to know
I hold to feel the hurt of letting go
