Where the Wind Whisks Me Away…

Of affection long begotten,
Of feelings long forgotten,
Of pleasures long since partaken,
Of sights my eyes were delighted to have beholden,
Let me forget… for I feel myself thinking,
Without them, I and my soul shall be left yearning,
Yes, yearning,
For a time when love was enduring,
For winter nights when I and my Rosie together were sleeping
For moments when our passions were flaming and our hearts truly were beating.
For days spent together strolling with our hands firmly clasping
Promising, foretelling, a future long since held back from becoming.

I think of this while rustling leaves in spring breeze flutter,
While bluejays and skylarks in elegant oaks chatter,
And from them emanates one endless whisper:
Go back, go back and be with her
Embrace her and promise her
That love once withered can bloom again forever.

Alas! Such a wistful desire those birds have lit,
Cunningly kindled and then craftily flit,
That I truly, fully, feel fear to dream’t
As though saint and satan on my shoulders sit,
Waiting, wishing, to see if I give in to it,
Give in to the only, lonely, desirous bit
Within my soul and buried far beneath it.

Yet the birdsong, I feel, has already begun to taint…
To hell with the devil and heaven with that saint!
I feel again in myself a flutter, no longer soft, no longer faint.
Yes. Yes! 
Let me be free of restriction and restraint,
Let my heart proclaim no more complaint,
For I go to see my Rosie and with her reacquaint!
What once was can be once more
What once was craved can be mine now and forevermore.

Ah, my Rosie, where did you go?
To the lofty peaks over which four winds blow.
To the small little towns over which silvery clouds snow.
To the serpentine paths over which you step steady and slow.
I saw you last under starry sky and weeping willow.
I seek you now over rolling hills and fields shorn fallow.

Please, my dear, let my search be not in vain,
For my hope is naught but a little, no more than a grain,
engulfed from above, hidden among soured and bitter sad fruits of pain
That lay stagnant and still, foul and fetid, within my heart of hearts -Oh! What a shame!

All summer long shall I search for you whom without I cannot exist,
For memories of bewitching banter, ravishing rapture, and many a moonlight tryst,
Drive me on and on, across desolate highlands where gnarled junipers twist,
 Through mirage-filled and murky mires laden with heavy mist,
Until at last, at the very end of the hope that has graciously let me persist,

 Shall I find you lost amidst russeted woods, 
Smiling your impish smile as goldened gingkoes dip their boughs into babbling brooks,
Twirling your flaxen curls, laying upon sun-kissed stone conversing with ebony rooks
And the wispy wind brings the wingéd sages eager word
Of the pilgrim and his pain most bitterly endured,
Long nursed and longer still remembered,
And they relay tantalizing words long left unheard:
I too, have sought you; my heart too, has stirred.

Here in this blessed autumn let us again embrace!
Our separation from thought let us forever efface,
For we need keep only the memory of the divine grace
That has willed our meeting again, here in this primal place.
Here, beneath the burgundy branches, shall we chase,
The dream we once dreamt together, here in this place.