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Fog
David William Paley
The lovers consumed by the fire
From the love that flared in a blaze
Around vows that were made on a cloud
See their promise extinguished
By the fog from the river that swirled
Through pledges that, then, were dismissed
As they buried their hearts from the world.
A passionate flame flickered and died
Flooded by waves of vaporous pride
That consigns to the tomb wrapped in a shroud
The thoughts, everlasting, they had formerly sighed.
The mist rolls up from the sea settling over the dunes;
Now, the rain and the snow fall without cease
On unhappy lovers as cold climbs into their bones.
Trees now bend to the stream and weep for the skies
Dropping dead leaves as they mourn
For the death of the light that gleamed in their eyes
As they glinted with the coming of dawn;
But the souls of the parted are strewn to the winds
That carry their words to lands beyond trace,
For, the sun never shines on minds that are closed
To the joys of the day and the warmth of embrace.
The mountains are clad with a mantle of green
And the blue of the hills lifts eyes to the heights
Where a flower still blooms in the valley between
Waving its petals that awake to their plight.
There, in the wild, forlorn on the peaks,
The remnant is found, far away, in the rocks.
Nurture the plant in the heart that was closed
Hidden from sight by the slight one supposed
Cloaked in the darkness of doom that, then, knocks:
Blossoms still beckon with the scent of the past
And the seed of new life implores from the crevice
Those, now alone, to forget and to cherish.
Let confusion be cleared; let warmer winds blow.
Search for the beauty that lived in the past:
Listen to bells sound peals on the air
That, no longer muffled, seek an end to despair.
Walk on the hills, now, clearly endowed
With a view of the wave far away down below
Obscured in the past by the delusion of error
That drifts through the dreams of those who are proud.
Gaze from the cliff to the sails on the sea
That cross to the harbour and moor at the quay;
Rush to receive the ship that was lost
To greet her return from the land of the frost.
The fog on the marsh is dispelled by the sun
That brightens the dawn with the advent of life.
The nebulous future, obscured by the gloom
Beclouding the mind with a curtain of veils,
Transforms to a vision where one may assume
That life will be spent where fortune prevails.
Clouds will be white and skies be starlit at night
To shine with a light on romance, once eclipsed,
That returns with the moon from lands of the dark
To bathe in the depths immersed in the soul.
Let the new lantern stream from above
With the brightest of rays to glow gently within
Where the thickest of haze is revealed as your love.
© David William Paley
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