A Strangers Request

I do not regret our brief conversation.

You asked if I could write a few lines.

A poem on love, a stranger’s request

to share with the world in print.

An epitaph for a stranger’s heart.

What universal truths lie in that request?

To feel love’s first touch on eye and heart,

that momentary lift of breathlessness

that this could be someone special.

That maybe they could be ‘the one’.

The first brief kiss

the first mention of your name

to know that you exist

to know that you might care

in time, for me.

In the dawn of that early love

to see you from a distance

would be to feel the first warmth

of the sun’s rays

on an early summer’s morning.

Uplifting as a daisy to the light.

To write of the heights of your love’s desire

the shared emotions of which you briefly talked

and then in the utmost depth of your passing

is to know that before I wrote those lines,

you passed.

Leaving me bereft for the failure of my task.

But isn’t it just like love?

To have that gift to share,

embrace a stranger’s request

catch those fleeting moments.

The fulfilment of heart’s desire

of sharing love’s

universal warmth

and knowing

that someone cared

and shared her life.

And as an epitaph

I share that love with you.

15th September 2019.02:44 a.m.-3:08am.

Fine, clear Harvest Full Moon.

A request unfulfilled to write a love poem for the Western Gazette

for Jacquie, a stranger in my life