Flawed Man

You are sunlight and flowers
Your laughter
A skipping stream of consonants
Like water over rocks

But I am night
And a lonely moon against a tower,
Shadows and blue moonbeams
And the lull of quiet hours

The magic of my art
Often runs at cross purposes
With the rhythm of our loving

I need solitude and crickets
Darkness closing its eyelids—
Shadows to loom
And populate a room
With innumerable
Improbable characters

I didn’t choose this;
But Life chose me Instead
To voice its pain
And put into words
The beauty of the mundane

I wish I could tell your beauty
Softly
But it’s my rough hands
That caress your face

I am a flawed man,
Who before you
Was a doubled-up fist,

But now can hold soft things…

Fragile as a butterfly’s wings,

Delicate as night’s face

Tender as its dark eyelids

Fluttering in infinite space.