ODE TO BEAUTY

by Londis Carpenter

copyright (c) 2002

 

I touched your hands and felt the Mother Earth,

Who, from her richest loam, gave them their birth.

Your fluid eyes hide sparks of deep desire,

Where, side-by-side, the water lives with fire.

Deep wells are these, wet windows of the soul.

Artesian waters, pure and sweet and cold,

Lie limpid in their aquiferic hold.

If by some chance I possessed Cupid's bow,

Should Time have been more kind and less a foe,

Then, like a Moses, I would smite the stone,

Which cruelly guards these waters for it's own.

And using every arrow in my quiver,

I'd burst the rock to drink from your sweet river.

But Time has placed between us salted veins.

And love, beyond all reason, carries pain.

So, although my dreams be flavored with your vision,

'Tis not my fate to make your life a prison.