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Notes About The Poem

image from elvis.safeccons.com

*cold-hearted orb that rules the night, white satin, and letters I’ve written, never meaning to send are words from the Moody Blues’ song “Nights in White Satin.” Justin Hayward is credited with writing the song. (Source Wikipedia.com)

Poem written for and submitted to “A Poem Based on a Song” poetry contest, Joseph May, sponsor, November 13, 2025.

LUMINESCENT CONFESSIONS-A Poem Based on a Song Contest

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Suspended like a cataract’s pale lens,
     *the cold-hearted orb rules the night~
          its blue-gray light pooling 
               into the hollow of his heart.
  
Fourteen envelopes stacked like unmarked graves.  
     He fingers the topmost seal, the wax brittle as hope~  
          the moon bleaching
                their blue edges to bone.  

What ghosts swim in this lunar milk? 
     No answers come~  
          only the ache of his ink
                confessing:

These are *letters I’ve written, never meaning to send~

    each a whispered confession, 
          unspoken prayers of my soul
    paper cathedrals
          built on the fault line of my heart.

     small, papery ghosts, haunted by the weight
           of unspoken things~
     each a brittle testament, 
           a love that breathes only in the amber of my memory.

     each one unfolded
           read in the stillness of lunar milk.
     each page I lift,
           the moonlight dissects each I’m sorry

     each one swirls in specks of dust 
          where your absence hangs. 
              I see your ghost in every autumn leaf. 
                  I remember our nights on sheets of *white satin. 

Silence and regret are suffocating me. 
     Come home… 
          he rewrites in paragraphs
               …till dawn bleeds gray.

12th gradelost lovelovefree verse

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