This poem is dedicated to the two true loves I knew in my unfulfilled life: Anna Maria Decicco and Liane Jackie Beale Stafford. And to the third who could have been...who somewhere I don't doubt is listening to the sweet, sad songs of Bread. :)

THINGS PLACED AGROUND, VISITED

One day I came around and learned the truth was dying,
Although for many years I think I had always known.
But I kept the truth inside a box inside my heart.
And kept my heart in a place where it lived unopened.

A place where love and kindness are taken for granted.
Where sad times and bad times need never be forgiven.
Where only good times and sweet times understand the truth:
No life grown used to happiness...does ever last for long.

For this is what a life becomes when death comes early:
No more than the deathless joy you place inside a box.
Then place inside the shelves of your mercenary heart.
And then hope to exhume at a better time and place.

For there is no god called forgiveness or second chance.
But only the fate of “could have been” and “should have been.”
And equally unspeakably desolate and dead...
Is the endless memory of what will never be.

Then before one memory can fail to heal the wounds
Of the love you should have felt before it was too late,
You hurry to a place they call a cemetery
And prepare yourself for the eternal life called death.

And these things you do, surrounded by others like you
Who have also taken sweet happiness for granted.
For the gift of love and kindness God gives everyone
Is always learned completely when we come to grieve it.

Until someday soon all of us must unlock the box
And pour out it contents for only ourselves to see.
After you convey the box to a gash in the ground
That bears the remains of a love you loved more than God!

Then the next moment you place the box inside the hole
That is a grave...buried inside a cemetery.
Then you learn the meaning of life and the gift of love.
But always when it is so dark...and always too late.