…Love past…

14 Lines (after John Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”)                                   

In my mind’s eye he’ll be always sixteen,

half-remembered fragment of a teenage dream –

a love fed in secret, never confessed,

sweeter and purer because unexpressed.

A wish unfulfilled, a pleasure untried,

risks and chances untaken, not denied,

the might-have –been remains the might-still-be,

not to suffer that he should tire of me.

For desire subsides when passion is spent –

the rejected lover’s timeless lament.

In memory youth does not fade away

but lingers for an everlasting day –

fleetingly captured, elusive and rare.

Forever will I love and he be fair.

Void

Once the distance between us was a physical space,

now the distance between us is time

but, though separated by time and by place,

I think of you once in a while

and recall your gestures, though we never embraced –

and I still remember your smile.

We weren’t ever together so cannot be apart

and yet there’s a lingering ache in my heart ……..