When I Was Alone

“When I Was Alone”

I asked myself a question,
When I was alone,
The answer was unknown.
I see the people as they come
To the hollow funeral drum.
They come in masks of horror
With voices of distant thunder.
Tell me—are they happy?
Do they know I am sorry?
Can I trust this as a memory?
Are these things that only I see?
Is yesterday what it seems,
Or am I just remembering my dreams?
Lone lives longing to be lost—
Pretty flowers dying in the frost.
When will you ever come home?

Soon, you’ll be a memory,
Sleeping sound in storm clouds
Of another yesterday.
Soon, we’ll say our goodbyes—goodbyes
Because everybody dies.
You’ll be just moonbeams, and tears.
Why must you fade like the rainbows
In tired mists over the trees?
I must have lost you
Like a bird on the horizon,
Soaring through the twilight
That hurts my tired eyes.
You were weeping through my soul
When I said I cannot walk beside you
Through the fields of your visions
To the far side of slumber
Where we’d recall what we were dreaming.
They came in masks of horror
To bear you through the heartache—
Past the sepulcher where our forms lie
Beyond the iron gates of sorrow
To leave me to my endless sleep,
Aching in my dreams of your voice,
So like the waves of a dying sea.
And all the night long, I lie in pain
Feeling I will know you, never again.
Such is sleep…such is sleep…

© 2022 Marten Hoyle