To the love of my life - Part 1 - A poem

To the love of my life, whoever she was – by P.K. Odendaal - August 2017.

The muse visited me last night just before bedtime and this poem streamed out of my soul – hope you enjoy it and that it touches a part of your soul:

This is just an ode to a friendship of old
Which went up in smoke when love had no hope
Yet the grief and the pain is all that remain
In a world and a season when friendship had no reason.

You came into my life in the guise of a wife
But the time was too short and too little to court
Yet you covered my soul and you made my life whole
And I will never forget the place where we met.

I remember your kiss and the moments of bliss
The time went fast by and I still know not why
You decided to send me a letter to end
A letter to reveal that my heart would not heal.

Yet it bothered me so that you had to go
Because I was bound by the fetters I found
In the past and the now and the unfulfilled vow
So let me forget the moment we met.

The times we have spent were lost in the end
Because it went by and we both remained shy
And we never could find a time to be kind
To turn and to say that there must be a way.

And so as I write in the darkness of night
I find no excuse why we both had to loose
What we never had thought was what we sought
From the start of our meet to the end of our greet.

And had it been so that we both had to go
I knew it was wrong if we both went along
And wasted our time on the love of our prime
So the fact that you went was my gift in the end.

But still I do find as I study my mind
That my thoughts were impure and my future unsure
And that they will remain in the chasms of shame
And therefore my aim - and for the reasons I claim
It belongs to the past as some error at last
Until it destroys all the hopes and the joys
Of our memories past which we thought would still last.

In the end it's the cost of the love we have lost
And all we can show are our moments of woe
And what could have been in our future unseen
So I now close my book on the effort it took.

To remain just a ghost to the girl I loved most
And what it still meant for the time we have spent.
To conclude with a thought on the battles I fought
For the love of a life which had ended in strife.

None of my care I was willing to share
To redeem my desire at the altars of fire
In the end all I know is that somehow the blow
Falls only on you who never pursue
The thoughts of your mind in the moments you find
To consider the cost of a love that was lost.

So bid it adieu as it can never be new
For I won't be tried in the place where it died
The lesson I learned through the years I have yearned
Was to turn a blind side to the pain that I hide
And to face my regret in the way it was set
And to never look back to an old rotten sack.

And now beside a fading ember, these are things I still remember
Sure you have failed, for without me you have sailed
Your life was so hard and your emotions so scarred
That until you die, you will miss it like I

By P.K. Odendaal Aug 2017