No Heart Is Lost

No Heart Is Lost

What is distance to the heart?
No mile, nor hour elapsed,
that ever bore the weight of the departed,
lightened the soul.

For in the gathering time,
pushed down into the womb of the world,
the heavy burden unfurled, grows fat,
gorged upon the marrow and the cost.
The tumid bloated crush of loss.
Bedraggled steps, upon a mountains jagged edge.
The shifting shale of despair,
straining out the seconds into years.
The thousand yard stare,
stretching out the inches into tears.

What does love know of time?
When your heart beat in mine,
did the clock count the ticks, and the tocks of your feet,
as they stepped across the street,
in the steady downbeat of the salty rain.

No... It is the mind that forgets.
Memories purged in a sea of regrets,
awash in a currency of debt.
Mountains, heaped upon the heart, moments passed.
In the quiet space,
a thousand years, and a million miles from grace;

The first twinkle of your soft eyes,
splashed in the luminescence of your smile,
your heart beats within my chest,
and all the mountains,
and the worlds that passed between us,
cannot stop the thundering flood of love.
For you are here again;
Not a second has past,
nor a stray breath, parted from these lips.
All absence, filled in the heartbeat,
of your trembling fingertips.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012



Photograph: Amber Ortolano