These Stolen Hours

Like a lot of my poems, this was inspired by a dream. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say it was basically exactly how a dream I had played out. About a girl I was friends with at the time.

These Stolen Hours

 

The company has all arrived
in disarray; and many-lived
conspiracies to turn the tide
exist where they all do.

The fire grows up like the plot
engendered where we both are not,
but only one of us is sought;
they have no need for two.

But let their whispers fill the air--
they can but wait and wonder where
we are, and why it's mine to share
these stolen hours with you.

So here we are, the sidewalk shine
creates these shadows, yours and mine,
like visions I cannot define
with words, and speak them true.

Thus quiet do we walk along
like instrumentals in a song--
no words to ever make us wrong;
it's all they seem to do.

But there's a chorus in my mind
I quietly wish you would find;
and like a love song, undesigned,
feel that it lives in you.

So we, like passing ships at night
the moon has brought to drift alight,
do travel with an end in sight,
but just beyond the blue

Your hands are yours, all stowed away
inside a scarf of silver gray
so that no one can ever say:
'I wish I never knew.'

And mine stay buried deep within
my pockets, that I might pretend
that 'no beginning means no end.'
It's all I know to do.

And so these stolen hours wan
I know will never come again,
and sense your patient smile strain;
I smile back at you,

Assuring you (as if I can,
when still you hide away your hand)
that somewhere in this contraband
lies something bright and new.

But all my struggles seem to yield
are scars that once I thought had healed--
that desperation then revealed;
and how I felt the fool.

But then your hands did last emerge
to pull me forth, and from the verge
of all my promises' deserved:
'There's nothing left to do.'

And so our steps make not a sound--
the night has opened up around
us both, as if, by nothing found,
we found each other, too.

The company was stirring when
we finally returned to them,
who, like a spotlight with a whim,
had eyes for only you.

And when you let them take away
the reason for my holiday,
they looked at me as if to say:
'This wasn't meant for you.'