The Hidden Hyacinth
A hint of sweetness tumbled on vernal
Breezes blowing across remembered scars
Pleasant sensations of love dismembered
By lack of inner sense or innocence
Distinguished only by distance or time
Some question of meaning or demeaning
Perspective casting its shadows revised
Rewriting a forgettable past
In noble shades of selfless sacrifice
Upon the pyre of Desire’s lovely flame
Burned as the held is never as the seen
Burned in the cheeks of embarrassed youth
Burning still when youth has been consumed
Burning still ravenously insatiate
Like an old fool falls in a flower bed
Face first, his hand clutching his wounded breast
A basket of living human skin
Wherein each nerve is seared and seared again
Desire a glowing ember carried too far
A dose of radiotherapy too strong
His free hand bloodied by the thorns he grasped
Attempting vainly to break his fall
With stinging exquisite pain he awakes
Surrounded there by tiny blue flowers
Their petals hanging like bunches of grapes
Small and delicate beneath the rose bush
He rolls over on his back and sees the sky
Clouds of tufted white drifting slowly by
Past the dreary landscape of loneliness
Beyond the hands of impotent regret
Out there where anxiety is irrelevant
His pounding heart gradually subsides
Resolving into a strange emotion
Whose essence is as illusive as the scent
Of hyacinth hidden behind the rose
