Still And Surely (An Original Thursday Poem)

 Still and Surely

We can sit at any table in any tavern in the world
And I will still hold your heart gently between my two hands.
I do not want to love you, but I cannot seem to help myself.
The spirit that shines through you, cloud shrouded though it may be
in these tired days
Speaks to mine in a language only we two can know.

I can sit alone, buried beneath sorrows and dreams
And still feel you as surely as I feel the wind blowing off the winter sea
As surely as the birds dip and plunge off imaginary coastal cliffs,
As surely as the sun creeps lower and lower into the blue-consuming darkness.

Your tender heart matches mine beat for beat despite miles of land and longing.
I wish I could not feel it
but I do.

But if I didn’t
if I didn’t

There is no choice in it – there is no if I didn’t.
Love is not a choice, it is a fate, it is a fable,
It is a tale reserved for candlelit darknesses at rough wooden tables
with the sound of the ocean singing distant in our ears.

(Submitted for Thursday Poet’s Rally – Week 36)