I'll dive through
solid ice,
into freezing waters
to drag you,
up to life,
resuscitate
your sweet heart
with drops of blood,
hold you around
the waist
and squeeze
the salty sea out,
pollution swallowed...
rub your forehead
caress your ears
as you come to,
again a silvery spoon
to this bronze fork.
And golden are plains
to heavens least forbore.
I sat at the counter
drinking one too many
oblivious of those around me.
"Drowning your sorrows", she asked.
What did she know of sorrows?
"They float, you know." she said persistently.
I may have been drunk,
but always politically correct.
I forbore to swear. They float.
So I couldn't drink my sorrows down.
No alcohol would erase my pain.
"What is then the antidote to sorrow?"
I solemnly inquired.
"Perhaps love?" But that was a commodity
of which I had none.
So I could not reply
for I wanted none of her compassion.
Yet somehow she persuaded me to leave,
and almost knocking her down
lurched out of the smoke-filled bar
to the inclement weather outside.
I still wonder why we met again,
and again. Then we made love.
And I found some bliss
I had never tasted before.
Until the day she died.
So I returned to the smoke filled bar.
Just to have one drink.
A toast to my dead love.
But now I swear I'll never get drunk again.
I pick up my old man's white stick,
slowly make my way home,
sorrowful I could never see her face to face.
I ask myself again and again:
why was I born blind?