YOU, MY LOVE

YOU, MY LOVE

(a diary in verse)

Richard Atwood

* * *

7 July 1966
Sembach, Germany

I give you these words
and a chance for stars on a starless night,
when loneliness in each of us
will come to bring the void too deep,
too far away to bear …

(though this we’ll have)
to keep us safe
through every ringing day without,
made hollow by the notes of
aching in our bones …

to keep us warm
as cloaks, these shells
we’ll wear as useful things
that will so little feel

save pain
of wonderment,
re-swearing to our battered troth
upon the seas
… the stormy, stormy seas
to come to crush and freeze.

These words …

to keep us safe,
to keep us on
the charted page
we’ve booked … for

passage through the time
we’ll never know.

* * *

12 April 1965
Sembach, Germany

Like children
(young and touchingly earnest)
we hold hands under tables
and steal kisses with a
searching, rapid glance.

I did not know love could be so silent,
so alive—
with a hidden intensity
that speaks a language
no ear has ever heard.

And I am a man—young,
and you, a woman—full …
both realizing that we have needs
that must be fulfilled …
in ways untouched before
by anyone.

* * *

14 April 1965
Sembach, Germany

By the light of day
(when I think of you)
it seems we dwell in
separate, star-flung galaxies
… and I am afraid to believe
that perhaps what lies between us
is only a part of night’s myth.

But when the sky darkens
(after the fallen sun)
I know I am living a dream
far too precious to speak of
… for then you are close again,
as true and alive as I dared hope.

And then … fear lingers
in the far away mist of another morning.

* * *

28 April 1965
London, England

More beautiful than the sea are you,
surging against a moonlit shore
with star-grained sands
twinkling flirtations into night.

Your beauty lies in tranquil depths,
hidden beneath fair-moving waves
that linger floatingly
on the edge of my desire.

* * *

13 January 1966
Sembach, Germany

You are into me
like flame and fire
as no other desire could
know such gentle fury.
Enraged,
my love with cotton fists
pounds
to break my walls and will
to bring me down
to loving you,
thinking you
breathing, wanting, and dreaming you
… like an undefined thirst
incalculably uncontrolled,
or passion spent in seeking
a wild
and wondrous rose.

* * *

30 March 1966
Sembach, Germany

It’s uncannily good
how wonderful your voice
can start the day,
even if it’s half lost
and buried in a tangle of wires
on a telephone …
with the sun out first thing
and the sky clear-blue and cold
… spring late and lazy
coming through the still wintery
end of March:
your words
become the soft of morning’s promise,
the warmth and hope of many summers
yet to be …
interplayed
between the sound, the day …
the long and lonely distance bridged.

* * *

21 September 1966
Inglewood, California

The green-white glary walls
of rooms are empty

the naked sheets and pillows
neither soft nor warm …

without you

beaches are deserted
and streets a faceless maze.

Oh, why! … in all the world
of all the places
must you be
where it is you are!

While I try endlessly, unconsciously
to forget … to remember.