A Secret

© Turtle Caps Art   Queens Boro New York City.. street art, painter, muralist, graffiti, illustrations.

The beauty of poetry surprises me again and again. Even though poetry is not mainstream or something one could earn one’s living from, its about love; love of words and ideas and just love itself. The well known poets are good, to be sure, but it is gems like this poem below that makes my heart skip a beat and fall in love, all over again, with poetry. Long live the poets!!

ps. this poem was posted on Allpoetry.com, find it here , go check it out.

by EugeneM

A Secret

When I was a young man,
with no more sense than patience,
I found a sort of backstairs, backstreet
love that bloomed only in
the cul-de-sacs of alleys
at the rear of shops, or the shade
of churchyard linden trees.

I would go to her at nightfall
when the summer’s dust
was still warm on the roads
or rain had sweetened them,
keeping always to the dark pools
between the street lights,
the gloom of avenues
where tall spreading planes
occluded the watchful moon.

I concealed my love, as a child
hides a treasured find
in a sequestered place,
stealing out to caress it, careful never
to confess it to priest or teacher,
police or parent; I sealed
our secret from all prying eyes,
denied her by burial
under a hundredweight of silence.

The years between have tombed
her name like the sunken bowsprit
of a ship long graved
beneath the sea’s immensity;
only I know the quiet of those old
night pilgrimages to see her
and yet no dearer thing to me
than the remembered likeness of her face,
so that in dreams I find myself
running down moonlit streets
in search of our lost love.