When the fire of love
flickers dims and dies
and a shadow falls
deep in darkened eyes
hollow words of love
become but empty lies
that open door
of a tender heart
has swung quietly closed
round the fragile part
what once so sweet and effortless
can never again feel right
and the fall begins so near unseen
as though but the passing of night
until one morning no dawn breaks
no tenderness nor warmth awakes
and a loneliness encircles slow
you seek the one that you’ve loved so
she’s here arms reach
she shares your bed
you roll and turn
then lift your head
you search her face
in the predawn glow
whose eyes these are
you no longer know
you feel no tears
you feel no fight
a knowing rises from this night
sadly it will never again be right
it’s in this painful clarity
you realize
you know
though she’s still here in your bed
her heart
left long ago
*
rob kistner © 2022
Poetry at: dVerse
an aubade that sings so bitter-sweetly! the rhymes are unobtrusive and I like how the rhythm changes towards the end. Bravo Rob!
Thank you Laura. This is, for me, just the telling of a bitter memory. It was very easy to write. It flowed with little effort, from my heart.
To have someone leaving before she has left is almost more painful than if she actually leaves.
It is because it makes it impossible to begin moving on.
Wow, what a powerful moment of revelation, so skilfully evoked, Rob!
Thank you so much Ingrid… 🙂
This is incredibly bittersweet and poignant, Rob! I resonate with; “until one morning no dawn breaks no tenderness nor warmth awakes and a loneliness encircles slow.” Sigh..
Thank you Sanaa. I occasionally get in touch with my deeper heart…m:)
This is so wonderfully classical in style that a river could not flow better..
Wonderful..was out looking fir Pushkin square and instead found John Lennon and Pet?fi Szandor. I have one more day here so will find it…and sill reply to your brilliant words before, just wifi issues..
Thank you Ain. It would be neat if you found the tree in Pushkin, but certainly not at your peril.
Heart poems of any sort usually flow the flowiest, Rob, and this is no exception. Beautifully heartwrenched/ing. Thanks for the share.
Yes they do Ron. They are just so emotionally present when you’re composing.
“that open door
of a tender heart
has swung quietly closed
round the fragile part” … beautiful and sad, but sensible
“you feel no tears
you feel no fight
a knowing rises from this night” … you are so good at writing would-be song lyrics; this would be an excellent chorus
I love Chris Stapleton … going on a listening binge now <3
Thank you Shawna — and you are welcome for CS… 😉
An excellent aubade, brother. I, too, have sung that song, lived that moment more than once. As poetry, it is masterful. As life, it sucks.
Thank you Glenn. I am keeping to my pledge to myself to write only love poems this week. This one is ftom the other side of the mirror.
Such a heartbreaking aubade, Rob! But then, many love songs are sad…
Yes, but I wrote a happy one too! 😉
Bitter-sweet but beautifully done, Rob!
Thank you Punam.
Oh, Rob, another heartbreaker. Both your love poems and your love lost poems are some of the best among all my poet follows.
Xan, when you have been born an abandoned bastard, then adopted into a wholly dysfunctional family, the disrupter of which was a paranoid schizophrenic racist maniacal matriarch — you begin a search for, and an analytical investigator into the question and concept of love — you uncover a great deal regarding what love is supposed to be, and what it is supposed to look like. So it becomes easier to recognize it, and to effectively mimic it, reasonably so. It is from all that investigation of and experimenting with love, male (look at my pics, I was a beautiful rock-band-boy of the 70’s) and the same facade brought me numerous female relationships, several marriages, and my beloved children. The male thing didn’t appeal physically to me, so I never went there — simply used it for personal advantage. I became very effective at writing about love, and “performing” it. Was I any good at actually being the lover or the beloved throughout the many relationships in my life — there is much evidence, after 75 years, that falls on both the negative and positive side of the ledger. I would label myself early, as a needy, insecure, romantic — great in the theater of love at the beginning of the relationship, but troubled at sustaining it. I also had a mixed bag of feelings about women, with regard to genuine trust, which I forced myself successfully, to eventually grow beyond — as I had the good fortune of having good, strong, smart, authentic women enter my life at times, the best being my boss at Lucasfilm LTD in the mid 90’s. I learned early on how to manipulate using my growing knowledge and experience of love. Now I know how to accept, respect, and love authentic women — and how to recognize the posers, whatever their reason be to pose. It took 40-45 years of my radical twists and turns in my life to get there. It has made me finally a “real boy”, and an excellent writer and a romantic stage singer, as a frontman for a band, as l grew from the learning angry romantic man, through experimentation and confusion, to a real man. Throughout it all, I was a good father, because that was the great example I was so fortunate to have found in my adoptive father. So to say, I can write good love poetry is because I have been there, on every side of the concept — from very dark, to very light, with lots of shades of grey, and a couple neons slong the way.
Your words tell of one of the saddest times in love. Beautifully penned Rob.
Thank you Linda. When you seen and felt all shades of love, as both both lover and beloved — the writing comes easily.