As curtains of grief hide the sun’s warm rays
and shadows penetrate this sorrowed space,
I turn back time to think of sunlit days
when lambent light embraced your florid face.

I close my eyes and seek your lissome lips;
my tears fall freely as I yearn for you.
I need to feel the touch of fingertips
caressing softly as they used to do.

I thought, my Love, we’d ever walk in light,
our rainbowed days would never know an end,
but now I know how dark can be the night,
how void the day without my love, my friend.

In anxious dreams again I call you back,
then I awake and see you fade to black.

Copyright © 1999 Ruth Gillis

First published in the November 1999 issue of
RB's Poets' Viewpoint