The Receding Tides of Love by D. L. McHale


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It is easy to say goodbye – to meet again is hard.
Love gone like rose petals fallen on flowing waters.

My thoughts of are like flowing waters, meandering toward the open sea on a hopeless journey.

In time, washed away over a burnt and fading orange horizon.

My hope, too!

The north wind blows! Oh, how it blows, mercilessly cutting with icy fingers into the quick of me…

Here on the ocean it’s endlessly cold!

My home is at the bend of a crumbling, salt-soaked pier. I watch a lone white sail at heavens’ end – like a waking dream, quickly gone – who can I ask where?

Darkness descends upon the endless sea.

We had often walked upon warmer, infinite sands, pressing our bare heels into the foaming wetness.

Your footprints were swept away too quickly…swallowed by the receding tides of love.

This cold empty beach was never what I wished; these scattered empty shells speak of inevitable ends.

The beauty of the ocean’s edge declines more year by year, memories pulled into the deep forgotten blue with each retreating wave.

As the sun goes down,  chilling lunar winds descend, whipping the sands, stinging my face.

With beauty comes inevitable pain!

To hear seagulls cry, or see pelicans on the fly makes me sorrow even more.

Oh, how I lack the courage for this day!

Wrapping solitude around me like vaporous veil, I turn for home – or what I once call home:

an empty room, a quiet room,
an empty bed, a quiet bed
my refuge from the darkness
my refuge from the light

In deep deception, imagining I’ve found a place that suits me..
I have made my home amidst this mighty shore, yet I can no longer bear the crashing of the ocean swells.

Outside my window, all the butterflies are white – a pair flitter over the dying garden’s light.

These damn reflections – they damage my heart!

Two tears trace two lines down my face, falling upon the ocean’s beaten coast.

Separated from the loving and the unloving: I have not often thought of her, but neither can I forget. We would not recognize each other even if we met again.

My face is covered with sand, my temples glazed with ocean foam.

In deepest darkness of night, a sudden dream returns me to her arms; we look at each other without a word, a thousand recriminations flow.

I know that this must have some deeper meaning. It must!

My muse lifts me from my sickly slumber, and smiling, asks me to write a poem, as though verse might somehow soothe this savage state!

I try to write the pain away, but there are no words.

Tonight, the ocean’s wind enters through the window. Torn gauze curtain starts to flutter and fly.

I turn slowly in my bed, looking up at the bright moon and send my prayers a thousand miles into light.

3 thoughts on “The Receding Tides of Love by D. L. McHale

  1. LadyBlueRose's Thoughts Into Words

    to feel the hurt of yesterday is to know your emotions flow on with the tides of time
    as the tides recede, they do come back each day, so is that hope or faith in tomorrows dream

    simply beautiful in a haunting whisper of twilight
    Take care…You Matter…
    )0(
    maryrose

    Liked by 1 person

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