Love's Labors

All my life
And I could not stop
All my life passed by
And I could not stop, but loving you

Time, it seems
Abandoned me.
Or perhaps, in his wiles,
Left this indelible mark

So much as a name written across me
With each look in the mirror
I see you, or perhaps, my other.
And wonder who is this ebullient girl, this present woman
With her world so wonderfully constructed
Every detail bent to her every whim
Lacking in one essential thing- Love.
The greatest of "these"

This, Love, survived two marriages
Yours and mine,
And the birth of a child
And, as we were, two more who are lost.

This, Love, cast
like a tightly-woven net over my heart
When I thought I had taken myself back
Expecting to make the famous catch
Of self-expression.
Intending to be
A sheltering tower
A delicate bud into bloom
A greening summer field for pasture.

Instead, I am a brilliant flash
The fire-strewn sky I had always hoped for
But, after comes, no more light
Instead a pile of ash
A lazy, mocking dissipation
For in the end it is me here, Alone.
And you alone as well.

And found, standing here
Heart in hand
Only to find it is exactly, perfectly
One half.
The opposite of the fullness it never fully knew.
Instead, this dys-symmetry which I know more equally,
More than I will know myself
Seeing as I am, as it was, ever half-empty.