Hawk's Eyes
in the bright light of day you appeared...
a gilded angel with falcon wings,
you rose up out of the desert sands
and your gentle beauty struck me dumb -
sending a tremor through my soul...
marvelling, pretending an air of studied uncaring
i watched you through a veil of wind-blown hair
and tried to ignore the yearning sighs of the
blood in my veins,
and the keening of a heart that was broken -
that, seeing you, healed briefly -
only to fracture again every time you turned away
you were fatal...
i knew this in my marrow, even as i stared,
riveted, at your cherub's innocence,
suffocating, slowly - sweetly -
in the decadent gold-striated hazel of your
hawk's eyes
you were a killing blow out of the blue,
and once again i was lost...
"angel" i wanted to cry, "angel, ask my name..."
but, naive as Adam, you lost yourself in the bustle
and sand-blasted clamor of your clawed companions...
bereft i hovered, a lonely kestrel riding the chill wind
of your ignorance...
a single tear slid down my cheek;
oh i would have impaled myself on a thousand spears,
if it would only make you run to my side
and scoop me into your bronze embrace
but time slid by and planets shifted -
the day's end drew near...
desert dunes dissolved into the hazy purple of night,
and i was forced to say goodbye;
to pretend love at first sight was just a giddy adolescent joke,
and that your image wasn't tattooed on my heart
in blood and fire...
only then, as my soul swelled with the bitter bile of
disappointment, did you turn and behold
the torment of your beauty written on my face...
boyish, innocent, your eyes clashed with mine -
and melted my core to lava -
and gave my battered heart wings;
clipped wings perhaps, but wings nonetheless...
you smiled, a saccharine-coated admission of acknowledgement,
even as your eyes stabbed cruelly, violated my bruised soul,
and the sun set at your back -
gilding you in demonic flame...
and in a blazing flash, that was it, the die was cast,
reeling, bleeding, i broke our searing gaze;
'angel you may be, my oblivious love,'
i thought as i walked away
'but devil you are for wounding me this way -
and never even knowing my name'
Copyright © Amy Van De Casteele | Year Posted 2009
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