Poems: set 5

The waves throw back my longing
The gulls decry my thoughts
But walking in the saltwind
A stillness smooths my knots.

Within the ocean's knowing
Within the sea's own mind
I sense a song of changing
And curious, I find
The choices are quite near
In every waking step
That on my way I'm taking
A treasure I have kept.

And as I turn to landward
Where someday she will rise
Behind me waits an ocean
A truth before me lies.

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

Warm as autumn rivers
	bearing golden leaves
Another year is turning
	turning with the breeze
And we will not replace it
	cycled out of mind
Nor can we quite grasp it
	washing away time
As in a forest golden
	where leaves unbidden fall
We worry for a profit
	though all we have is all.

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

O, Laura,
	That ever night would win
A consequence of dreaming
	And where I long have been
To walk among the wildflowers
	Where sunlight once had shone
To give to you at morning
	Wet with dew alone.

What meanings beckon
	Out of dream, 
That hope would rise
	From the unseen
Already, as if there were more
	Than has been yet,
		Yet stands the door
Impossibly open.

I should have studied harder then
I should have learned by now, my friend,
Yet here am I
Already there
As if in hope I had no care
	As if the night had never known
	As if my life were never thrown
		By anguished fear and rage, unfair
		At all the crushing sadness there
		That ripped aside my roof and wall
		And flung me down to grieving thrall
		Bereft of spark or laugh or smile
	Cleft from dream and offered bile
Left beside the road for dead
Without a stone to rest my head
Until, for lack of else to do,
I once more stand
		Awake to you.

You gifted a quiet smile.

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

A friend of fine appointment
	confided loss and fear
A mother with her children
	Well and growing near
With seven bonny darlings
	afforded all she had
Recovering from a nightmare
	that took away their Dad
And I must pause in wondering.

Here is a test of values
	issuing from the day
That in the darkeness slumbers
	and struggles into gray:

Is mine an honest friendship?
		

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

Beneath the whispering alder leaves
       Children play, and no one grieves
Laughter spikes the woodland air
       children smile and grownups care.
Sheltered in the world above
       tender couples mingle love
Passion wanes, passion waxes
       inviting closer human access,
First of touch, a first embrace
       first caressing of the face
               Loving grip of emotional heat
               Sweeps away cool reason's seat.
                       Cresting swell of oceanic life
                       Lift the linked above vain strife
                               Surging higher, engulfing all
                               Beyond where lovers still could fall
                               Beyond the reach of time and space
                               To that plateau where glows the face
                               Of gods in glory, laughing...

All becalm withdrawn release
       The drawing back, the kiss of peace,
The hollowness, the vacancy
       The loss of true reality...
               Yet those who love are gathered still
               Touching yet, kisses fulfill
                       Aspiring that love might linger on
                       As if the night would bring no dawn
                               Weaving a desirous chord
                               He, his lady; She, her lord,
                               ...and on into the fire's coals
                                       a promise kept where are no goals.

Every Night, tonight.



© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1995 
 ...back to poems set 5

Windswept sparks whip brightly aside
       the scudding campfires try to hide
Down low among the fieldstone ring
       from the wind, whose impatient moans
Crack the branches of night
       and still I stand watch... waiting...

Somewhere far away tonight
       a woman sleeps by candlelight
Of whom she dreams I cannot see
       but I see her clearly, in front of me...

As I stand and count the stars
       and await the desperate call of Mars
Her scent I smell, her skin I feel
       although a dream as much as real
I see someday her smile for me
       and ache inside that I were free
To walk now all that hopeful road
       and hold her in the wordless ode.


© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1995 
 ...back to poems set 5

I know it isn't wise
       to open up that door
To walk out in your moonlight
       as I have done before...
I know it isn't sensible
       to bet it all again
When passion makes me vulnerable
       and odds don't think I'll win...
There is but one affirming thing
       that keeps me moving on
And that's how happily I rise
       to greet the morning's dawn.

Lay your precious head across
       my chest again tonight
and tell me that you love me
       and that everything's alright.

Some things are soon forgotten
       and some things never die
I've dreamed of you so often
       in daylight's alibi
The danger seems an old friend
       as innocent as a smile:
Though angels try to mend this heart
       they fear to walk my mile.

But lay your head across me
       and comfort me with lies
I'll fall for your known fallacies
       and think the foolish wise.


© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1995 
 ...back to poems set 5

After the glow and fire are known
       and the hot attraction is outworn
The new body has been explored, skin to bone,
       then rise old ghosts, new reborn:
Flores! Flores por los Muertos!

Flowing out of odd dark corners
       In husks of memory
Sculpting time strips love to scorn
       Ground with anguished emory:
Flores! Flores por los Muertos!

Suggesting, reminding, come what may,
       Whatever we do is like yesterday
In crucial moments suppose and replace
       slipping the death mask on a living face:
Flores! Flores por los Muertos!

Like ravening vampires undismayed
       They draw the life from love displayed
Trying to jealously doom happiness
       Of the new bloom they suck holiness:
Flores! Flores por los Muertos!

Beware, then, O lovers, and fashion
       after love is undeniably said
Between your talk and throes of passion
       offer flowers for your dead:
Flores! Flores por los Muertos!


© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1995 
 ...back to poems set 5

As time revolves around an age
	And elders wonder true
The young to life would seek a sage
	And solve the lost issue.

And in our mantled visioning
	Encrusted with our years
The important we are pondering
	While youth dies at our ears.

All the wildest quests abuse,
	That sparked our kindled minds,
Still we dismiss as ancient news
	What the quickened finds.

Oh, they will learn that questions age
	As surely as did we
But we, as ours, still fail to guage
	The currents of life's sea.

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

Having seen the pleasant days
When mists, diffused with golden rays,
Carried here your garden scent
And dampened vine with dew
An ancient heart is startled
With eyes awake for you.

Quiet fingers trim the vine
And test the leaves with care
The swelling grapes are sweetening
As morning clears the air
Again a sound of quickening
With eyes in quest for you.

Then in, to lonely breakfasting
And coffee on the porch
Chill morning warming slowly, shines
And sipping sweetened steaming cup
I close my eyes in quest for you.

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

At the moment of our waking
	From what we thought would be
While time swells like a stormfront
	Looming out to sea
I ask of you the question
	Of what you wish to know
And answering you ask me
	Where do the children go?

And here upon this headland
	Where paths away divide
Where often blowing beachsand
	Will our footprints hide
We pause to know the beauty
	Like as the sweeping sea
And answering must hold you
	Tenderly to me.
		
© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

When snap of chill invites the green to gold
And hearth in warmth and light makes welcome home
Then magnified are details left untold
In spring a quip, in harvest heavy tome.

And grown alike as children from their toys
When falls away the need to each possess
We give our moments as our daily joys
And build the tales within our lives' caress.

Companionship in comfort, aged in love,
Our hurried work of building for the night
Our young adventure filled to stars above
This life to our potential's full requite.

Our moment of forever yet to fill 
Our moment of shared dreaming beckons still.  



		
© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

We dance within the framework of our lives
Advancing evolution in our minds
Averring that the seeker sometimes finds
No matter how benightedly he strives.

So reach across the threshold of your time
And yearn for what you doubt may ever stay
Embraced by haunting mem'ries gone away
Wearing your tomorrows for their rhyme.

And as for my beloved and her me
The moment stands eternal in the glow
Cherishing the present that we know
In passionate betrothal like a sea.

To celebrate the being of this love
Now freed of shackling culture's legacy
Two lives like living lamps of prophecy
That cause the dance our hearts are beating of.

So in the mortal sense of this embrace
Before uncertain fires of what will be
And after that which was has gone from me:
In tenderness this light adores your face.


© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

We touch a place of sharing art...
A resonant delight; a start.
As beacons glowing 'gainst the night
We grow. We reach for depth and height.
And though we've neither map nor chart
to guide these dances of the heart,
we dance. And dancing, earn the right
to dream with courage...come what might.
                      (by Laura Kassoy, 1997 published by permission)
With courage beyond mortal years
Within our breasts to smite our fears
Inspired by our passion's lay
While walking night as if broad day
We stretch to touch our outstretched hands
And meeting, brush away the sands
That hid the bedrock of belief
To stand unbowed, in glad relief. 
                      (my response)


© copyrights claimed by Laura Kassoy and Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

Whatever falls upon this unfilled time
That creeps upon my page like shadow's fall
And captures up the errant twisting rhyme
To wrest from me the perfect lover's call?

What fear within me wrestles passion's dance
And sings to me the griefs of past love's fall
Yet grasping firm, believing in the chance
That faith in your revealing may save all?

So waiting for deliv'rance in these hours
While worried that unease has found his bride
To steal away the treasure that was ours
 And take my place to lead you from my side.

One mention of discomfort I recieved
Yet all my world awaits a word believed.



© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

And then upon the further page
Where dragons burn and daemons rage
Against the rising of the sun
The freedom to be me stands clear
As bells of gladness din the ear
And opens up the eyes of one
Who named the hellspawn in his age
Releasing freedom from her cage.

And on release and claiming free
The fear hath fled away from me
For she within her own light knows
The rage against eternal night
Where I must wage my spirit's fight
For wellness within our love grows
Despite this errant wandering
As I await at passion's spring.


© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

Ritual springs from my lady's sweet dance
Golden hair soft as the breeze, to my glance,
Rising to kiss from the midst of her day,
Deftly caressing my troubles away.

In the cool evening I find my way home
Scent the good cooking and lift up the tome
She has left open to personal choice
Gifting a passage that speaks in her voice.

Bells from a garden may call us to dine;
Golden of Autumn may sweeten sunshine:
Such is my sensing of my lady's eye
On my soul sleeping when morning is nigh.

When upon waking I stroke her soft cheek,
Whisper her name like the rhyme that I seek,
Then, like a rhapsody's unbroken aire,
Gladness awakens, with both of us there.

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

From the sad day I was first disappointed
	From a fond childhood of well schooled illusion
From grim day benighted, so aptly appointed
	With brooding dispair and wildest confusion,
This woman awakens me to laughter and joy
	I have not felt since I was a small boy.

Now the moment of which all poets sang
	That balances books to this spiritual wealth
With redeeming happiness' savory tang
	A gift as from heaven in surfeit of health
That evil black dragons of grief are as slain
	When this woman's sunlight
		broke through my sad rain.

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1998 
 ...back to poems set 5

Within a past of winding ways
	Oft where anguish lay in wait
In darkness tangled up with greys
	And sunlight glinting rare and great
Within the thorned and twisted wild
	Grown from earthen mother's child,
I sought my rest from grief profound
	From mystery, from harrowed plight,
And to myself my heart I bound
	While loping toward a hopeful light
Mentioned in the ancient words
	And hinted in the flight of birds.

Still now upon this golden plain
	Where often sunlight dwells of late
Where grasses green with gentle rain
	And night of stars will populate
The dome above this freedom hold
	As young as life, and as old,
I find a solace in her ways
	A meal to eat and bed to warm
A merry meeting for my days
	And speak my mind, an' it no harm,
Writing my unbidden words
	Of winged hearts that soar as birds.


© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1998 
 ...back to poems set 5

As in a garden dreaming
	I heard a distant bell
Cast in ancient meaning
	A future to foretell
Amid the bones of spirit
	Amid the clattered signs
Surrounded by strange context
	Where angled are the lines
I note my needs in silence
	Among the songs of birds
And wait the hand of justice
	To clarify my words:
Accept the precious unknown

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 2002 
 ...back to poems set 5

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 3

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5

© copyrights claimed by Richard Romero, 1997 
 ...back to poems set 5