Lost in the Wind

How many poems have been lost in the wind

that started to rise but never reached an end?

How many words fluttered but never found wing

to lift off the page and gloriously sing?

How many hearts inspired but too soon to close

whose petals, rain-beaten, are like a red rose

in a garden of vines that grow from the soil

to choke out the lifeblood with unsleeping toil?

How many dreams ebbed before reaching their flow

whose nights stifled the sunlight’s passionate glow?

How many hands haunted by the touch of time

pressed into the palms of a nursery rhyme?

How much strength has never tasted its power

or been lost in the minutes that fill an hour?

How hungry the soul that is bound by its roots

but is starved for a taste of the sweeter fruits?

How unlived the life without a joy or smile

that lost its way along the desolate mile?

How blinded the sight of the wandering eye

that recalls not the beauty of earth and sky?

How sacred the saints in sepulchers of sod

that forever confess their sins to their God?

How written is the word that never left pen

buried deep in the minds of unsettled men?

How lost is the lost when yet lost in the wind?

If there is no beginning, there is no end.

So I lose myself until we meet again,

when the last page of my life is closed. Amen.

Author's Note

Reviews

[mattavelli]

This is beautiful. You gave a strong meaning to your title.

[Robert Parlange]

Amazing. You just described the writing life. Full of fits and starts; few conclusions. We do tend to start things and never finish them: projects, books, relationships. Maybe it's fear of completion. Of what we will become when it's over. I'm rambling.

Very good poem. From your output, I can see you are very talented. But you don't need me to tell you that.

[charlie]

Moving rhetoric, Linda. The poem reflects how earnestly you put yourself into it.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"how written is the word that never left pen"

mmm it is indelibly written in the soul of the poet...even without the ink hitting paper.

and the lost can be pretty lost...and when we finally close the book on our life...is it then and only then that we are finally found?

j.