Shades of Love

Looking For You | Shulling Peas | To The Island | Wood Pidgeons | Iles Flotantes | Wall of Glass | Beech Mast | Deep Pool | In a Desert Place | The Great Love | Watch Me Dance | Change of Season | Following | A Place For Conversation | All Time | Gone | Marram

Gone

I looked for you along the long dark hallway
where the scent of lavender hung on the dusty air.
A pot of fern stood on the tiled floor,
a jug of lilac on the hall table.
Through the empty doorway I saw you
walking away from me, then hurrying.
Fast down the gravelled drive you hastened,
your feet quickening past the gatepost.
Why were you running from me?
I tripped on the step, falling badly,
tears in my eyes, no use pursuing you,
you were long gone along the road
under the alien light of the street lamps.

A silence flowed towards me and into the house,
the beat of your footsteps gone, the beat of your heart
lost to me, the pulse of love quietened and still.
The silence grew thicker and deeper, the night darker,
as I climbed the lonely stairs to a lonelier bed,
lying there in a kind of desperation, wide awake,
hating the silence and wanting to disperse it
so that I cried out loud, screaming almost,
‘Why have you left me, gone from me!’
The silence stretched through the night.