Willow Weep

 

It wasn't failure, all those things

that didn't work out. It was living:

stumbling, learning, starting again.

We didn't make it much more than a year,

but the love did: the memory of you above me,

on that hillside among the yellow flowers,

your dark eyes, blue sky behind you,

the picture perfect clouds.

You visited me in dreams after you died,

telling me you understood that when

I told you I would love you forever,

I told the truth, even though
we never spoke again

in person once we said goodbye.

In dreams, we were together again

and this time we knew it was love,

as we had been

too fear- and sorrow-filled to believe

all those years past, that long-ago summer

full of weeping willow and your dark eyes,

a love that danced forward, then stepped back,

two souls who had no idea how to trust

that anything could last, those songs
we left unsung, a time

when you, and the world, and love

and I were young.

Inspired by "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert.