Painting: “Alone” by artist Benjamin Prewitt

*

The night is cold, and empty.
Only oblivion beckons,
Only dreaming.
No-one whispers there or speaks a name
Into the darkness.

The moon is full tonight
Smiling down on lovers.
Lightly veiled,
Silvered curves of skin
Entwined in tenderness.

Yet here she casts but shadows,
Phantom presence
Mirroring a dream,
A longing unfulfilled
A fire kindled
And unquenched,

Consuming night
With velvet gloves
And starlit promises
Of languid mornings

When the sunlight
Sees the hawk rise,
Taking flight into the dawn
That gave him birth
And calls him home
To immolation
In the heart’s flame.

Willing sacrifice of self,
Unresisting gallantry,
With eyes that hold the vision
Of beyond the veil.

He is no victim.
Yet as his torment burns him
Darkness turns to ashes,
Drifting on the wind.

Tempered, forged in pain
A tender alchemy of Love
That leaves him only joy
And golden life
And laughter in the morning
Rising with the mist
As he takes flight.

Painting: “Renascentia” by artist Benjamin Prewitt