Sonnet I

If ever love, in time, your words increased
And never more to me did sweetly say,
Your words in time would never all decease
Or fall, gall, and die by tragic way.

Yet never have I said to you the words
Your wanton ears could never then caress.
If only my songs could fly like winged birds
To your warm heart in all of its distress.

When silence breaks, our lover's words then said
So tenderly ending the hush and hope and pain,
This heart of mine, still broken, bare and dead,
Would melt, or fade, like streaming tears through rain.

So seldom do we helpless lovers say
What human hearts and souls alone do pray.

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A Soul To Give

She completes me;
And all the things I love, she loves.
Too many though to recite in verse,
But she mends my broken Shakespeare
When my tortured tongue attempts to write;
Her alto voice is pure and sweet
As she sings to my spirit and to my soul;
Beautiful too, yet dangerous,
With silk-smooth hair, and pallid cheek,
I gape in awe, and tell of only the lesser part.

I ache too much when she is gone,
Counting minutes, hours and seconds
Until she calls, or writes, or passes by.
And strange, it is a happy hurt,
As I know the comfort of her arms,
Time and sweet-soft silence together
In dreams so tender, holding-heat
I am hers to have, and her love is mine.

I wasn't looking for affection,
But she found me, and I cherish her
As never another in all my days
And this sensation, too, is new.

And how can I tell
What it is to wake and live,
After sleep has stolen a dozen years?
The self-same guilt, and hidden tears.

And strange, how slight traces of her
Put small and silly smile upon my face.
I detect her perfume when she is gone,
And taste her lips in dreams, as awake.
Her picture waits, and holds for me
Patiently there, in and through my mind.

My life before seemed so unreal;
As another’s life, and I a witness,
But now the moments seem so true,
And I feel, and grasp, and take my being.
Once again I think and feel and share. 

The sharing is the most important part,
For love is dead when two souls part;
And this is what it means to live:
To share our lives; two hearts to give.

...Bill Ames

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