Santa Monica Pier
I remember watching
the ocean roll on the shore,
wave after wave,
crashing down on the solid sand
and I idly staring back
wondering if the Atlantic was as blue.
I watched him light a candle
and move in the swaying light
from a bygone age.
The flame flickered, so fragile,
it leans and sways in the cold breeze
My burning love is the flame in the lamp
From antiquity--a pre-industrial artifact
An oil lamp of glass from Rome
Bronze from Carthage
A terra-cotta from Athens
He smiles at me
in a flicker of light and
knows all my past like a line from Virgil
A chronicle from Homer
An essay from Milton, a history of Herodotus
And me, ignorant,
knowing nothing of him
can only quote
from Ovid,
Beowulf,
Caedmon and Gilgamesh.
The flame descends,
From the nape of the lit candle,
and we are lying in darkness on a spring night.
Everything in history is forgotten
and yesterdays are not so many
as night descends,
the lit moon cast in the glow
of the lamplight of our love.
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