Several Pleasures
I've never found anything perfect
except a flower once that never died.
It swiveled in the sun's slow swing
slept in snow, woke for the Bride
in spring, plush and wild each year from
drinking sky.
I've never had anything last
except that flying summer of love for light
where children briefly burned their hungry fear;
that spark became the wildfire of my life.
Its living fire keeps me whole tonight
protected from the winter-walking years.
I've never had a dime I didn't spend
except the gold we minted for love's pay.
Spendthrifts can lose a fortune in a day,
yet keep it all in a sun-vault of a safe
with two last coins for final fare on eyes
that see their dreams at last without disguise.
December 2021
posted for dVerse Poets
Images: Narcissus 'Sir Winston Churchill' © joyannjones 2014
Dancing couple, featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969. © Jim Marshall Photography LLC Fair Use
The poem grows out of sadness and finishes in such lonely, lovely lines, that one about spendthrifts...really almost too powerful...you turned luck upside down, then upside down again. Wonderful poetry.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ain. I cannot get onto your site, but I loved your poem.
DeleteOnce I saw the pic at the end, things fell into place. The psychedelic flower summer of love called Woodstock. I've been reading about how they are using mushrooms and MDMA in controlled settings for trauma therapy now.
ReplyDeleteWell, we certainly had trauma, and it certainly was therapy. Thanks, Li.
DeleteI especially love that title and opening stanza, which pairs so well with the image of the flowers. I also love "winter-walking" to express the (g)olden years--that is so apt. Good stuff, dear BFF. Please forgive the brevity...I am at half speed today, as you know.
ReplyDeleteI always find your tags illuminating - the sub-rosa poem, as it were, the little flashlight beams that cause me to re-read and re-think whatever my wee brain sees the first or second pass through your pens.
ReplyDeleteWinter-walking. I think that will be a good therapeutic - a good reminder, to keep going ~
Thanks, M. That is exactly how I look at the tags, and the winter we walk..well, we all know you can't stop moving in its cold.
DeleteSingular pleasures last forever in this realm between anguish and bitter harvest -- coigns of vantage for any winter and coins for the endless winter to come. They redeem the hours and the void: so we better celebrate them in poems like this. Pleasure is an eros, florally exuberant and flower-child nubile, the everblooming heart and the art which "stays plush and wild each year" and keeps coals glowing in the cold. Charms wound thus are bright offerings to the Ferryman, who takes us according to what and how we cherished. Fine winter comfort here, Hedge.
ReplyDeleteThanks for getting it, B. All my love poems are becoming such prisms of age..
DeleteThis is mesmerisingly beautiful!
ReplyDelete'It swiveled in the sun's slow swing
slept in snow, woke for the Bride
in spring, '
Such flowing lyricism: I love it!
WOW. This is incredible, Hedgewitch <3 Not just for all your beautiful turns of phrase but the wisdom inherent throughout. I love the whole of the first stanza and just this image of a stubbornly undying flower, stubborn like hope :-) And the lines:
ReplyDelete"that spark became the wildfire of my life...
protected from the winter-walking years."
"with two last coins for final fare on eyes
that see their dreams at last without disguise." <3
We are all following that swiveling spiral road. It has no timeframe.
ReplyDeleteLove the lovely, lyrical flow of your verse but it seems to have underlying sadness.
ReplyDeleteSuch poignant lyrical verses that beg re-reading. This is so layered. I love the hint of mythology link to the past and future. I really like "Its living fire keeps me whole tonight
ReplyDeleteprotected from the winter-walking years."
I do love your poem, and the picture brought it to perfection... I actually thought about "the summer of love" already before I had scrolled down to the picture. There must have been so many for whom, those few months where the pinnacle of life.
ReplyDelete