Phlegmatic Poem by Patrick Rylands

Phlegmatic



My unvoiced love is heaven-high
I lie atop and wonder why
I never ran in the snow to tell you the news
(I signed away the insignificant dues)
A box of letters in my room
Clumsy poems
Your name written a hundred times

I dreamt of crying tears alongside your tomb

Today I walk alone to your places
I grow frightened that I cannot summon your voice,
Your presence, your smiling faces…
The dream of your gentleness, your infinite distances
Memorable instances
Of kindness
And no less the loss for their untruth
You will see me walking hurriedly in the Sundays of you
Coat tails dragging my untidy pursuit of your moody ghost.

And that day you almost said you loved me
Is a memory I laid in the cold ground.
As the mourners stood around speaking your praises
I cursed that you left me
Another cast-off from your fickle carelessness.

They told me that you left a letter for me;
A thing I burned the same day
For fear of what it would not say -
That you cared but did not dare say it
That you felt the same as I.

I wonder why
You stayed so long
And why I follow you still
Although I know you are only snow on a forgotten stone
Unvisited save for ghosts as I
Chasing memories
Of a love that never made it off the pages of my poetry.

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