Colours

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1 | Love; it is no secret; I am
not your same, nor a flame from your flame;
but you're dependent on the fuel
I give you; for what is a touch
without the skin to feel it on?
but so; too, in true love, what is fuel
without the flame to burn upon?

How empty is Heaven
          without a soul
to abide in its realm?

The mystery of whether

          we're all born eternal
from infinity into finality
          into the prison of history
with the freedom to inscribe
what we want to become
          in our own mortal story
becomes moot when you begin
          your narration. Love,
          you are that deviation

where sometimes we feel
          others write what we want to;
or we write before they can do;
or we don't begin to write until
after the event is through;
wishing if only we knew
the end we are born to.

2 | We grow from being anywhere
to being just where we are, from believing
we're immortal, to knowing we have one life
established in one certain time
made from many possible times;
though we're never to know

whether we are given or we choose
our template for life: we're free
to view only with hindsight;

foresight is only for the few

who see that every journey
          must end to begin again.
Love; when our clashing judgements
          collide; then comes the use for your alchemy
of mind and body; else what are we,
           but pointless motions going nowhere,
without the compass of the heart
           to show us the way home?

Why do we let you speak
           unless to live collectively?
Without your unity
there can be no body of stories
with which to tell our tales;
there are no homes with hearths
in which warm fires will burn.

3 | What good is a fireplace
if it has no one to keep warm?
What use is a door if there is no one
to open it, or a lock if there is
no key for it? Love you're a dilemma
always kept close to deepen

our human stories before
the final end is revealed;
which, Love, you tell us

is as final as the cycle

of a season's wheel,
and Love, how can you go both ways
          when life only goes one way?
A downward movement physically
          to spiritually end on a high?
          Your science and religion
only adds more mystery than clarity
          because absolute knowledge is only
at the exclusion of being human;

we, too, only provide mystery to your clarity,
          we are experts on your colours
even if we don't know where they
come from; there are times you are the earth,
and I, the water you need; and times
I am the rooted shore that thirsts
for the sea that salts you.

4 | I thirst even more
when I take a drink of you,
even in your redundancy
you work to burn me,
you take your rest in a locked chest
where you hide all that is precious.

Love, you look at me; as though in me
you have found the answers
that point towards the heart

of life as though there were

an inner eye of poetry in me
       that can answer everything
so easily; Love do you know
       how I'm faced with questions
that look to me, when you look at me, too?
       For example: why are you like water,
which when I taste
turns into a fire that can burn
       out the soul's supply,

as if we're simply fuel
       for your own desire?
And if you are an extension
of the other, why then
after the first love,
is there another?
Why do you bother?

5 | Why is the end of Love
not like Death entire?
Why do we base you, Love, on the thin air
of feelings and desire
that can change and disappear?
And not on the mountains

of rational thought that do not?
Is that not a little
more than unfair?

But then I look to you, Love; and I find

that I don't need all the answers
       to direct me towards the heart
of my own life; for amongst all
       these passing phantoms
and flickering shadows
in the reel of life, you are
       what has been the most real;
lending your truth to all
the poems I shall write

or have ever read;
        I remember instead that you are
both the hearth and the fire,
the salted ocean and the river water,
one flowing into another,
dirtying, muddying, purifying, cleansing
Love, you are everything

made from nothing.

Published 29 May, 2026

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