Three Thoughts About Lost Love

By Jack Lambert

To a Dead Child

A memory of you, the noisy bustle
and whistle of you coming
down, down the bare ward hall to me,
small black hands dancing, dancing in the air,
your frail dark eyes bright as gold
above the raw sweet flower of your smile…

This thought of you
is like a lover's absence,
presses against my skin, fills the place
where your small arms held my neck.

Copyright 2001

Anniversary Photo

The flame we fed is low now,
the old guarded wounds have healed.
our need for one another
points like some forgotten name,
a little aside from life.

"This too shall pass," we would say,
and then resolving to live
above all regret, we culled
from every day each small grain,
whether of guilt or sorrow.

Now drunk with sweet forbearance,
circled by our children's smiles,
we kiss--a remnant gesture
of our anonymous grace.

Copyright 2001

Divorce

No one can engineer
flesh or frailer moments
to one trajectory.
Will may set hope's
or love's inclination,
yet hope and love will rise
like vast sensate balloons,
membraneous and groaning
at some sudden pleasure
of vagrant wind or whim.

We once set our course well,
you and I, believing,
as lovers always do,
that time was on our side,
that hearts could marry wills
and wills, the stuff of time.

Now, years beyond that first
we sail, seamless and whole,
undiminished, except
by distance, that last bond.

Copyright 2001