poet's lament.

i met her walking down a river

i was walking up and down

waiting for something to come

i'd long learned that the wide spaces 

were not for me with their long horizons

that i need a direction pointing me

towards something faraway

and grand

the first is vital and the second

needed to excuse these night time wanderings

and as for why i am here at noon

i don't know but this

i met her walking down the river

blue slips of feet and long arms

with the fabric flowing down her form

like it loved to do it

all she had was a flower

as longstemmed as she

and it dropped from the slender fingers

into the eddying water

and swept its way to shore

i found it in my fingertips

still wet and strong stemmed

changing the water droplets clinging to it

to its brutally brilliant tint

and when i looked up

she was gone

i give you this rose

it is all i have left to give

i met her walking down the river

i need her to live.