A FLOWER IN THE MOONLIGHT

“Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone.” – C.S. Lewis

How time blunts our elderly sharp and pointy experiences, how the pains of the past mellow and even the most anguished memories leave behind only dull ache. Time heals our wounds, nostalgia paints with pastel-coloured brushes the days of old, and our few, small, once-experienced joys are amplified and idealised. How the past can seem so beautiful, until an old song, a yellowed photograph, a chance encounter with someone from that time can reawaken in us the acrid reality of those sad days of the past and make our scarred heart twinge again in sympathy with old and intense pains…

A poem I wrote many years ago, when my life was coloured by deepest and most miserable blacks and sublime, heavenly azures.

A Flower in the Moonlight

We started playing with words again tonight,
The singer articulating softly our innermost desires,
Our hearts vocalising dumbly our sweetest bitter dreams.
The room so small, the light so dim,
The night so deep, the short space between us,
So immense it could in light years be measured...

We’ve played this scene so many times before,
Two actors on the stage fumbling with props
Struggling with our lines, trying inarticulately to improvise
Forgotten speeches that we would not dare to speak
Even if we had remembered them.
Your eyes avoid mine while a flower blooms in your hand.

Above us the air a prism and a hundred light-bulb stars shine on a celluloid sky
A room with walls of music, the pasteboard moon for ceiling.
If we could only bridge the gap, dissolve the ice
If you could touch me now, think of what would be gained!

You stretch your hand, as years of silence crumble
A thousand nights, dead, are resurrected
And at last, this time on cue, you offer me
A flower in the moonlight.