Dissembling Regrets Poem by James Walter Orr

Life’s winter brings its frost bite to our hair.
It cools, perhaps, the heady wine that flows
Within our veins, our life-blood’s hidden lair,
But naught but death can give it that repose
That stops the roaming ghosts of memories
That rise to haunt the restless spirits, who
Have in youth’s wild impetuosities
Neglected for one moment to be true
To one to whom they owe their plight of troth;
From whom the flesh has strayed, with no surcease
Of bondage from the spirit. Fates are wroth
When tempted by the search for golden fleece.
The fates decree that when a sheep is shorn,
The ewe must tethered be, ere fleece is worn.

If winter were turned back to spring, then I
Could see the golden fleece that caused my pain;
Forbidden fruit that tempted me to deign
To challenge fate: To myself gratify.
I cannot now, at wintertime imply
The feelings that then coursed along my vein.
I meant not then Her memory to profane.
I rationalize, perhaps, to justify.
I look back: Stardust falls and subtly mingles
With sensory scents like spicy, soft, mown hay
And plays one’s beauty, ‘till my nerves a-tingle
Allow no thoughts of one who is away.
It forms a symphony too sweet for sorrow
To remind me that my love returns tomorrow.

The stardust falls on long-lash-shadowed eyes
And gains a quality it could not find
Elsewhere: A quality designed to blind
The one who, Beauty, has to idolize.
The feathery feel of breath: That sweet perfume
That drugs and captivates. The feel of form
That starts a pulse of pain: So sweet a storm
Of joy that does all time and world consume.
Not conscience, time, perhaps ‘tis naught but death
Can stay the worship of what reigns sublime;
Of that alone that stays the tides of time:
That halts her course with sigh of fragrant breath.
These all combine to create an allure
That could you, should you, pass and yet endure?

Tis true chagrin can, in the light of day
Make inroads that the night did not allow.
Once more the light of reason makes its play
On logic that the night did disavow.
As moisture in the sun evaporates,
In light of day infatuation fades,
And though my memory it still elates,
No longer now my thoughts of Her it shades.
She stands before my eyes as bright as Sol
Who swims the azure heavens toward his rest.
How did I that one moment not recall
The one whom now my total thoughts congest?
A momentary madness can’t dissever
My love that lives for Her, and will forever.

The night is dark; there lives no hint of moon,
But still the woodland glows from inward fire
And leaves no portent of a happening dire
That could upset my heartbeat’s throbbing croon.
I hear the chuckling laughter of a loon
As he, with mirth, derides the gentle choir
Of crickets, as they pluck their legged lyre,
Accompanied by Bull Frogs in lagoon.
She should be there, beneath that mighty Oak:
The one on whom my love I long to dole.
Mayhap she’ll never know the vows I broke,
When my arms did another’s love enroll.
I see her not. Do night-time shadows cloak
Her form? Ah, no! Pinned on that Oak, her scroll.

My trembling hand soon plucks the clinging note
From off the weathered roughness of the tree.
I scratch a match, while pulse-beat in my throat
Nigh stops my breath. I bow my head to see
Why missive from her hand now stands her stead
At lover’s tryst beneath the branched span
Where often from the world we two had fled,
As page by page the book of love we’d scan.
The note consisted of a single line
That swam beneath my eyes in flickering light:
“To you I looked as long as you were mine,
And that you ceased to be on yesternight.”
The guttering match went out. It left no spark.
The match, the woods, my life, the world was dark.

Dawn is painting bright the sky to eastward.
Fast fall the stars from sight beneath her brush.
The halting notes of a beginning thrush
Do fall as I turn once again to homeward.
Far off the plaintive call of Chanticleer
Floats gently o’er the woodland like a mist,
Almost as soft as lips so sweetly kissed,
And settles like caresses on my ear.
Too late to change: Ah, Fading Time, your bite
Doth wound and agonize with what was once
A love so freely given. Now its light
Is dimmed, and shines no more upon a dunce.
The sun shines full upon the woods, so how
Can they seem darker, even drearer now?

We’re born. We live. We die. Much chance for joy
Exists for those that won’t themselves restrict
To such a straitlaced path it will addict
The mind to misery. Such can decoy
The mind to such a state it will inflict
Great burdens heavily composed of grief
That makes our lives, already far too brief
A composite of what does contradict
The thought that man has got a true belief
That leads to anything but dying dust,
(For once the future dies, then all is rust)
Into a serf; his superstition chief.
Most men, with bliss within their reach to woo,
With self-imposed restrictions make taboo.