Siesta of the day
I take into my arms
Blue clouds and white wind
Swaying on the hammock in the breeze
Shaded by the boughs of hashish trees
My pipe is puffed in afternoon
Its smoke to lure you to my dreams
Where entangled we stilled lie
But only in my mind
On silken sheets of sundown beams
Afloat a gleaming azure sky

Ideas of March, 1997
(desmond)

For Carol T.

I ring the evening bell
And my tolling is from the trees
From the throat of the sundown breeze
I am a knelling of love
Pealing out before night wind is loosed
Here in the hush of twilight I live
Filled with the day’s fruits
Lured to my ringing by star rise
By mist of moon and silk of corn
I am the knelling of living heart
Sonorous in the birthing dark

February 13, 1997
(desmond)

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I wear her shirt to bed
All that I have of her
All that is left of me
Of a great cloth of love,

A worn patch next to my skin
Pressed to my beating heart
I wear in my travels
To dreaming

January 1, 1997
(desmond)

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Thinking of you on a timeless day
A rarity of desert grey
Time suspended in my hands
A web I weave where you might land
Fresh of snow from your cold world
To preen within my touches’ whorl
I imagine soft and fine
Like you are, a dream of mine
I dream now as dusk is near
A flower to adorn your ear
Bright and warm against your flesh
A bloom of words my fingers press
Into the braid my love has made
By my distant skill long used
To loving you in solitude,
So hush now speaks my brimming heart
As petals close at scent of dark
Timeless thoughts to you return
Tinged in the evening like the birds
Lit in gentle sundown skies
As from you away I turn
My twilight gleaming eyes

January 25, 1997
(desmond)

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Soft across the night sent
From the wind rising
Rain to veil the moonlight
Gently from the garden
It goes now scented by
Desert loam the sparkling
Rock world
Etched of midnight waters
Honed by a slight skill
Loosed by my will
Soothed in the wish of you
Spilled now it goes
Never to return to the cage
That held it in its breathing
Near the pulsing heart
It lived in silence
Until a moment ago
When it flew
From my startled hand
To you

September 9, 1995
(desmond)

Dawn in the grace of the poem
Have I been washed in dew
Showering now in the merest blue
Of aurora being born to bright

Night is done and my song I’ve sung
A shred of my soul I’ve loosed
Of love illumined in the birth
Of day

So to rest I go
Stained my hands by the poems’ hold
I knew for a moment in my still palm
As to the newborn world it flew
Leaving in my heart
Spellbound in the dawning hue
The wonders calm and filled of you

July 25, 1995
(desmond)

I remember my father being quite nocturnal. He would sleep almost the entire day, emerging in the early evening to rant about this-or-that. Possibly hungover. If ever I awoke in the middle of the night, I was almost guaranteed to find him awake in his dim-lit room, chain smoking and hunched over his typewriter, punching the keys individually one at a time with his index fingers. Precise. Meticulous. He would mull over each individual line of his poems, and then edit, tweak and retype a final copy.

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 Sleeping birds
Wilted in the heat of morn
Black in branches dream
Of trilling trickling in the throat

I too wish for this
Wet of warbling from your skin
Pressed onto my sleeping lips

July 26, 1995
(desmond)

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Sweet fresh morning rain
May it drip down my desert face
Onto your cheek and your lips
Where you sleep in the green
Left long ago at my back
Far off over the mountains

Clear, warm, soft rain
May it too fall
From the dark holding your hair
Pressed to the pillow
I will never share
With you in a moistures’ dream

May the purling I hear
Tonight be yours too near
As if the creek that is my heart
Hold your feet asleep
As if you were mine to keep

Like the rain
Falling calm and close, splashing
I too would so speak
In a voice to make you lush
Would I stay to rain each day

But the passing wind
Will not have it so
And like this shower
Trickling down in midnight slow
This drop of poem
Your ear my love to brush
Is all you’ll know

September 6, 1995
(desmond)

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I peel back reality
The lone bed in the cold room
And while I yawn now
While the ink of the night dries
It is to your arms I go
To the pillow of your hair
Fanned out in the white light
That the half-moon throws
Across the tapestry that my love weaved
To cover you as you dream
I stretch my heart out
Beside you to float
In the apple scent of your sleeping breath
I take hold of the oars of my joy
Push off from the shore of our lovers’ bed
To glide on the soft waves you send
My soul at peace my boat
On the lake of my dreamed delight
That never ends

November 24, 1995 | For Sue
(desmond)

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Playing my tinwhistle in the sun
Morning came and now has gone
While I piped a tune for you
Blew it out across the blue
In the winds that swiftly fly
Across the distance to your sigh
Sweet and clear my music floats
Filled by you my piping notes
So you a whistle may then hear
Some soft brush across your ear
My tender lips you will not see
A wisp of a lament
Sent from the heart of me

November 24, 1995 | For Sue
(desmond)

Honestly, this poem makes me laugh a bit– my dad was such a geek with his tinwhistle. Call it his Irish roots. He was first-generation American and very proud of his Irish heritage. Know matter how poor we were, he always had his tin green-tipped whistles. Which he apparently played for Sue, on this day… whoever Sue is.

About Desmond and Poems Unrequited.

Copyright © 2013-2023 Mani O'Brien. All rights reserved.