Echoes

The words I speak creep out in lonely sighs,

They echo through a sad and empty mind,

Hewn out from space that once was filled with charm,

Where once the spark of dreams lit up the night. 

The air is glistening with a distant fog

That shimmers with the ghost of vanished phrases,

Of things that once set joyful eyes aglow,

As long they stared at something ever-precious. 

I listen as the winds are stirring up

And whistling through the empty inner valley,

The ghostly howling is now an eerie comfort,

Perhaps it breaks a long and cruel silence. 

And, as I stare ahead across the plains,

I wonder if the emptiness that haunts me

Is made more painful by the life I cling to,

That still lives on in lonely memory. 

1/7/18