“Love is strange,” – Mickey & Sylvia.
Love is an abandoned ship
Drifting and cast to sea.
Deadly lonesome and rocks at her chip,
Yet pearly-white she gleams.
Inside her ink-black hull,
Dipping as pen in well,
Wildflowers safely rule
And butterflies flutter and dwell.
Starboard, larboard, it matters not,
The Life-Tree does interlace
In every board, her roots caught.
A vessel, now a covenanted space.
You fool! Why cast away such garden treasure?
Don’t you know wildflower hues
Can paint in any weather?
But freedom matters more than rouge.
Love is strange for its embrace
When we must release the seed.
Tsunamis come, but she is built to race
With a heron-head across the sea.
Hope now! Moonlight softly beams
To remind worm-eaten boards
Of the cost of dreams.
Seed, then root, then tree, then rewards.
Land ho! Love’s sighted,
A sorry show to know,
All but anchored, beaten and unalighted.
To her we go, courage bids us row!
For all her journey-time,
Patient, we did wait,
Of her growth we did rhyme.
Now a new thing, neither early nor late.
So we planted her innards
And the garden became a Nation.
Faithful always fly her standards,
Everlasting is our elation.
Her crusted cocoon, cracked and cut ship,
Has found a harbor in remembrance.
Wood afire, sails all ripped.
Far away must all the old be rinsed.
When I was young and impatient
I painted in wildflower hues
But then I saw my lost generation
And my heart gently bruised.
For all my selfish ire,
I knew what I must do,
Say goodbye and let sails fly,
Bid love adieu.
For it’s the wild Love chose,
Away from grasping hands,
On the sea, she grows and grows,
Into what becomes a land.
Allyson Faith.
