Ashes and Dead Coals

Ashes and Dead Coals

Hope is a string of pearls, hurled onto the floor,
torn between the desperation and the craw.
Measured days of heartache,
spoonfuls of opium scented flowers,
strewn in careless abandon on bloody tiles,
fake smiles, tossed to lions;
Strangeness, stumbling between the shards,
nothing left inside the hearth,
but ashes and dead coals.

How do we string those pearls together again?
When all the threads are broken,
how does the heart find the courage to endure?

In the garden of love there are two pools,
one of joy, the other of sorrow,
one past, one, tomorrow.
Libations in the lamentations of betrayal,
The arrows dipped, slipped into the wound.
To bathe in cool streams of past regret,
dreams, turned in upon themselves.
From root to seed, that ancient tree still bleeds.

Finding the time to breathe again,
The wailing edge of sorrow,
a bough without a song.
Deep ray, the dawn comes,
and with her, bright lark,
resplendently reborn from out the dark,
settles upon your heart, with joy, once more.

Strings of pearls threaded through ancient eyes,
matriculating in the school where love never dies.

© Richard Michael Parker 2017