To A Love I've Never Met

They say that absence is to love what a wind is to fire;
It snuffs the candle, weak and frail, easily misplaced and
quenched ~ but to the bonfire, it is whip to the racing
horse as it urges greater speed upon a headlong chase.

My heart is a forest aflame, feeding on the hurricane
growing from where you are not.

Too long I have laid myself down alone. Too many
moonlight silences have not been shared with your hand
in mine. Pity, like hot shame, cuts a path of liquid fire
down my cheeks as I beg for you at the altar of a god unmoved.

The shadow play of distant star coming through a veil of
night reminds me of what I do not have. A slow-match
smoldering is in my chest, I yearn for the knowledge of you.

There is a somewhere that you walk. A place where rocks,
living in the ground, support your stride confidently. A pleasant
breeze lifts the hem of that dress I have never seen. The patterns
of the weave are mystery to me and yet I know it does exist.
Flowing and bright, hiding all that it reveals, it lets me feast upon
an ankle turning outward as you tread upon that unknown land.

Why do you hide? My love is like a bower set upon a height and
then forgotten, dusty and faded it needs but soft encouragement
to renew itself and welcome the betrothed.

Can it be that we will never meet? Oh wicked fate, spare me this!

Let me know the gentle look which welcomes morning bustle
when dreams dissolve. Let me answer yes to that which words
cannot equate. Let me lie my soul beside you, like a bottle
waiting to be filled with the silver water of your smile.

Hurry, I wait upon the old hill, silently, patiently. Yet I weaken.

Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner