The coldness of moonbeams fades with sunrise

For the last forty years, I have been playing `the moon´,
waxing bright and luminous
(at times - though at other times waning till all light goes for a while).
But the light has not been my own - simply the reflected warmth and energy of another.

I never knew how to love and live as the Sun.
My wife did - and I enjoyed basking in the warmth she gave to me.
Swapping love for affection, season upon season, became the almanac.

Moon like, I flaunted my bright face
flirting with the distant stars,
too distant to engulf me in their cosmic conflagrations.

One day, by chance, two orbits intersected.
From the south, came a contact via the Internet.
A new person, new woman, the herald of a new life.
A close encounter of the first, second, third and every kind.

I feel transformed:
from a reflective body, to being a bright twin star.
Sucked out of orbit,
we circle each other like two fires in tango.
Dancing in desire, whilst sadly older systems subside ...

Moonlit by mind, I still feel the chill of only moonbeams.

Being Reflective in Arrabida

I have sat and traced the jumble of errors that made up my life.
Like an old musty box of mementos, lying open between my scuffed shoes of travel.

In a dusty framed mirror,
I see the many blind avenues that lead inexorably to the decline of reason,
till there was no reason.

On the Atlantic coast of Portugal, there is a point
where the incessant pounding of the restless ocean,
and the stubborn resistance of the primal basalt land
reaches an uneasy truce: long enough to last a lifetime.

My Love and I walk the foothills of this place and understand:
this lifetime we must make our own.

Is guilt a self-inflicted punishment? Or a comfort?

Today, I felt the full sorrow of my guilt,
like a knife cutting into my heart.

Perhaps it was comforting to feel that way,
especially when it is best assuaged with a new bottle of Porto
and a cigarette or three.
I have learned to mistrust my feelings
because I have never learned to trust my perception of reality.

But, before I relax too deeply into my cups,
Yes, I do feel guilty.
Guilty for having lost my love for the woman who loved me.

When did I lose that love?
Some when years ago, when I was carelessly looking the other way.
Trying my novice hand at husbandry without first seeking out the fertile soil.
Failing to understand that the vines of my self-interest needed to be trained;
not allowed to become a choking mass of florid foliage, unfruitful in its season.

I feel failure, fear failure,
perhaps seeking that my woeful neglect
can somehow be expurgated by too late a slash of the pruning hook.
Seeking solace in self mental flagellation ..........

The vintner of this Porto would probably have understood.

The Poppy Fields

A personal account of my life-journey as I undertake a decisive change in direction and circumstance.