Dogwood
Dogwood
for Sarah
We are but poor passing fates,
that I could not love you any more
than I do right now.
For I know of nothing in this world
so sad—or so beautiful
as your branches heavy with rain.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Ghazal
Ghazal
for Triin
Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant. — Martin Heidegger
The wind caresses me in the winter of the night with the nearness of the distant,
while memory wraps me, warmly, like a blanket of wool, with the nearness of the distant.
Your eyes: grey stars , a pallor in the darkness that leads me through the absence,
a chiaroscuro, an unfolding of shadows, where I meet you in the nearness of the distant.
There, standing with the crows, your hair windswept with the color of the wheat,
I walk alongside you through the forest of the trees of moss in the nearness of the distant.
A great, golden spire ruses up out of the fog, and a snow lays lazily on rooftops.
A sea embraces a sleepy fishing village as my windmills turn in the nearness of the distant.
The wind caresses me in the winter of the night, and yet I hear the singing of bees.
I am the sparrow caged by the snow laden limbs of its tree, but I will meet you—always,
In the nearness of the distant.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Snowflake
Snowflake
Single, solitary angel of wing
sifting softly, slowly sadly thou bring
Mine heart tumbling, trembling tragically down
As thou makes thy journey
To the ground.
Fleeting, frozen feather of white
Doest thine heart shine with the sun and light
That a cloud of high did set thee free
Hast thou fallen from the sky into the heart
Of me.
Wisps of whimsical wintry wind
Thou rides ‘round mine head as doest thou spin
Powdery kisses perfectly placed
The lilting of thy lace ‘pon
My face.
Touch, tease, tickle my nose
Lay ‘pon my tongue thy bittersweet ambrosia
For alas my endearments warm I fear
Are to leave me to be holding what ‘tis only thy
Tear.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Seashell
Seashell
My little heart of pink and pearl
bourn from bed of coral,
Deepest in blue I remember you
a shellfish with a soul.
Tiny crustacean, cerulean elation,
found is your way to me.
‘Cross whitened sands into my hands
a siren sad of sea.
Shallows roared, washed ashore
abandoned and alone.
Yet ‘tis within your kiss that I remiss,
your mother calls you—
Home.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Thistles
Thistles
Might the thorn
be as fragrant as the flower,
that the paradox of love is in the irony of its pain.
Thus I am drawn into a garden of thistles
where even the rose is entangled within its vine
that I cannot deny my passion
for beauty
Charles Coakley Simpson
Lust
Lust
To want you is never enough to know you–
What it is to touch you, to hold you,
to wake up in arms of which I do not wish to stir.
As I am neither the light in your eyes, nor the wind in your hair.
And yet you are ever the warmth in my arms at night,
even though I can only hold you–
In my heart
Charles Coakley Simpson
Elegy
Elegy
Then so the beauty of life lies not in its living–but in its dying.
Where we find solace in the splendor of regret.
Thus we must suffer gracefully, yet gladly, as we relive our memories.
And like them–sparkle, before we fade.
Charles Coakley Simpson
Charles
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