A Sonnet Sequence on Wine, Flowers and Love

On sharing wine

How intimate can strangers be at first
Their voices yet unheard, blank faces, still
Eyes eagerly awaiting, lips with thirst
Desirous to impart what words they will?

A vision flows as rivers do through banks
As flooding streams of words o’erflow the bounds
That hold them, checked, as soldiers do in ranks
Controlled by masters, sentries on their rounds.

So do I seek thy wondrous self too soon
As dewy dawn seeks dusk and moonlight, dry
With hunger, passion bringing both to ruin
Without love’s moisture, strength, to make it fly.

My silent lips apart a bit seek thine
As lovers would one glass in sharing wine.


On Sharing Flowers

The bud precocious struggles through the earth
hard bound from Winter’s lengthy deadly frost
its renaissance erupting -- virgin birth
miraculous, its shackles loosed, then lost.

The lengthy stems like sturdy oaks stand tall;
their outstretched branches all embracing wings
take care, their blossoms kissing zephyrs, all
that pass from pauper to unbending kings.

These gifts from mother find a way to please
not one but all to whom as gifts they pass
from one to each as balm the pains they ease
from ailing souls near death to youngest lass.

Yet, early plucked they still fulfill the needs
for those who love the thought, the rose or weeds.


The Decision

Why has my truest lover gone away
his name unknown, no hand to pen a rhyme,
no voice, no breath to read to me by day,
no inspiration left from me, no time?

He came, I saw, he conquered all he knew,
then left to wait for me by yonder shore.
I came, he saw, I conquered his soul, too;
he disappeared when I went back for more.

My first love swears fidelity will last
as I did swear till death we shall not part;
yet, I recall his painful sins, the past –
while mine we know came from a broken heart.

Now, all I have to love is lover’s verse,
from one the better – other one the worse.