Movement One:
Identity and Perception

We sever the arteries to our hearts to start
the flow away from fulfillment.  The instillment
of our virtues failed, and we re-install so as to fall
within acceptable levels of success.  A mess defined,
opined by worthy and unworthy friends, the ends
that never were in sight justifying a night unworked
in moments of self-doubt.  Pouting in front 
of a firing squad.  Hunt you a questing beast, released
to train hounds now too old to learn new quarry.
Wary of the price of looking in a reflecting pool,
rejecting our riddles for a middle of the road 
sensibility.  Fealty and reality unwoven for cloven
hooves.  The roofs of even palaces get wet when it rains
and chains we forge under an assumed name chafe
just as bitterly.  I will never know this face, this name,
this identity under any other nomenclature than love.


Movement Two:
Borne on winds of time and change

I will stand until the wind consumes me.  A thousand times
I shall blink my eyes and think it wise to step down.
step down.
step down into the seas of tears where the bitter fears
are regent and regicide is the art of the poet.  You know it
well, for you have held me in hungry arms and asked but
two things of me.  And I will forevermore grant them your
command.  I will stand as long as life enfolds me, and cold
as it may be here in the valley of the shadow of death,
my last breath shall form your name.  and no other.
mother of this child of my heart.  all the children 
of my heart.  thousands of them, like seeds of the future
you nurture everytime you dare to speak your love.


Movement Three:
Awakening in the Garden

You awoke this morning to find the dream incomplete.
Sweet it was, and telling.  Arms like a violet scarf wound
around your slender shoulders to give you bolder prayers
than those you cast to the wind through the window of my car
in the streetlights of Los Angeles.  I am whispering to you
each night as you sleep, weeping for lost love merely 
misplaced while you taste the bitterness of freedom
that is its own violation of you.  I will be here when
you take, and take you in arms of the Dragon, totem
and legend.  Woman and person.  Spirit and flesh to kiss
with a heart that only wants your joy and your peace.
And wants you to accept your dreams in the garden.


copyright William F. DeVault (wfdv)