Where Were You? Poem by James Walter Orr

The sun
melted away in the west.
The evening
produced its first star,
which emerged
as the sun sank to rest.
The evening star being Venus,
I asked her,
'Where were you
when my heart
asked her name? '
I saw her once,
when my vision was blessed
at just this same time, from afar,
and she sat,
as the soft breeze caressed
her skin, as she gazed at your star
and I asked myself
where her path led,
and nobody came,
and my heart bled.
I looked up, at that far, distant star
where the goddess of love has her home;
then looked down, my emotions at war,
as the night darkened, and the great dome
of the sky fell under
the storm cloud's thunder
as they took control of the sky,
and I wondered why,
as I uttered my cry:
Venus! Oh, Venus!
'Where were you
when my heart asked her name? '
'Where were you
on the night my heart died? '
She was surrounded
by the crumbled ruins
of a desolated village
like the result
of a war's pillage.
The moon peered feebly
through a stormy cloud
and imparted
a blue, eerie glow
where the grasses bowed.
She was kneeling
on a carpet of grass
so lush that it must have fed
on the bodies of the dead,
who lay buried just out of sight
in a field to the right.
The light breeze molded
her gossamer gown
against the blue phosphorescence
of her skin.
The moonbeams poured down;
The clouds boiled and churned,
as the gods fought
for a better place to view
she, whom I knew
was the epitome of loveliness.
She stretched her arms aloft
and implored you
in a voice so soft
to resolve the past
with her taste of the present
and her dreams of the future.
You were jealous,
and she couldn't stay.
You took her!
She faded away!
Back to the space
whence she came,
and I watched,
without knowing
her name.
I could not reach her
in time to beseech her,
and now I'm left
wondering why
my hopes for her love
had to die;
and my heart and soul
have to lie
among the ruined relics
of the past
and I'm
left aghast.