A Keyhole

A Keyhole

Agony is that muted and even murmur-less affection
without gesture,
that friends do by contradiction share
when that friendship is blind to recognize itself
And hearts closest takes for granted the bonds of their amity
-A conversation spoken through a closed door

It is not only the youth whose hopes are unrequited
who find themselves speaking to silence what they can not say
but old men, tweed jacketed and leather patched at the elbow, rehearse
the lines of this always play
the notes of this ever present song
and old women made young by this ardent foolishness appraise themselves
in window glass
-They say, keep my secrets shadows but tell my beloved in their dreams

Who recognizes gentleness and does not fall in love with it?
They touch and laugh and say with these errant touches and light laugher
ever so boldly and so fecklessly
-I have been struck in my heart by your kindness

Love is only, for all its windy verbiage,
a plea for meaning, a desire for definition
-Define me and let me be define by the number of all the days against all the unsaid things

It declares before death and the void
this person knew my clandestine heart
they heard what I whispered at daybreak
I trust the remembrance of me to this one other soul
To say before the lonely hours
-I will stand with my beloved and my beloved will stand with me
Before all the lonely hours