Devotion Poem Vantage Points

** Devotion Poem, VANTAGE POINTS ** (For Jim. #17 in Devotion Poem Series) “I’m not a romantic,” you announced at the very beginning With a side-flick of your hand As if you might then stand To exit…taking along your trail Of cool colors — the blues and greens — Too unwilling for any startling By my sun yellows, tangerine oranges Or my bleeding reds, To disturb your eyes. But committed to staying, you added, “I’ve never been able to wink either,” demonstrating that disability as if To say, “At you, I would if I could.” Hypotheses and proofs, have always linked In your engineer’s character, While crayons and ongoing arrows spread out through mine, Which, like our colors, I thought were complimentary, But now it appears you might have thought were just me being childish And not about any inspired creativity, from the other side of the brain, so Alien to the light-green violets On your side of the color wheel: Where the palette of intelligence has formulae — Not unpredictable outbursts Or random integers of emotion. Once, you held me like the first Glimpsing of a winking Venus in the dusk Presenting to all Her prelude of heaven’s lights To continue on through the night… But now, paddling deep in an ocean of years, I fear that you find me Like a flicking bedside candle Meddling in your wish to sleep… While some galaxies in my cosmos Have darkened With my own self-depreciation and decline So like Those stars and dreams that have gone aging. But inside, My sun’s risings and settings Still glow blessed With vibrant, surging color… Wishing to be held by your morning’s horizon-blue eyes. ———————————————————————- (c) sally young eslinger 3/22 Thanks be to God