Linda Marie Van Tassell

Autumn uplifts her golden samovar
spilling amber across the maple trees.
Her hair flutters like flaming cinnabar
or soft skeins of silk in the morning breeze.
...

Everything blooms in the mirror,
in stillwater eyes and cornsilk hair,
in the lamplight before the twilight
when all is asleep and unaware.
...

I taste happiness on your lips, hear laughter in your sighs.
I see the heavens in your smile and sunlight in your eyes.
I feel a yearning in your touch and hunger in your kiss,
and nothing matters more to me than sharing all of this.
...

The morning is moist with ocean spray.
The islands, they twist around the bay;
and across them all, my eyes have scanned -
the rocky cliffs and the buttes of sand.
...

I saw in you the best of me,
twin souls united set aflame.
I loved too much and could not see
that you and I were not the same
...

This water is like time slipping through my fingers.
Things that once were - no more - shall never be again.
Life lives in silence and sound, smiles and tears, lingers
in petals that find themselves drifting in the rain.
...

The Scene: a dark basement in the shadow of night
where dirty, perverted things are done out of sight.
His stealthy, secret visits are furtively made
by the torch of his eyes and the tip of his spade.
...

When passion was a fevered flame,
I had no want of guilt or shame.
I fell into a sea of bliss
and rode the sweet waves of your name.
...

Come! Give me your thoughts that have wandered far and long
in the realm of green meadows and the daisies' song
of love-me, love-me-not petals that shed their tears
beneath the hope of your touch and the joy of years.
...

Somewhere there's someone, sometime and someplace,
the one who loves me more than words can say.
He's the song of joy, a new bloom of love,
a whirlwind of wonder at break of day.
...

Grey city morning and black river streets.
Rain against my window, tears in my sheets.
Dark clouds in the sky, thunder overhead.
Imprint of your body left in my bed.
...

"You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean, in a drop."
~ Rumi
...

How you must have suffered to pluck a cloud,
to tear its tendrils to rain in my heart,
to sweep the sadness of a coffin shroud
casting long shadows to keep us apart.
...

Only a shirt -

I hold it
embrace it
...

All the love I have ever known
is the love that I gave to you,
a fruitless seed that I have sown
from which no blossoms ever grew.
...

I turned the heat on last night to chase away the cold;
and I perceived you in the sepulcher of my bones,
the bones that ache with hunger and tears, the great ensouled
that never really knew you, just words turned into stones.
...

'And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.'

I am not perfect; I never was -
a canonized lie of virgin white.
...

Her clothes hang in the closet.
The room smells of her perfume.
Their bed is dressed with pillows
of antique lace, some heirloom.
...

I long to wear you like a softly-scented cologne,
to smell your essence around me when I'm all alone,
to inhale you with each breath from the moment I wake,
to taste you on the wind with every step I take.
...

Save mine eyes from the sight.
I have sought thee for nineteen years;
and hence, have found thee.
I grasp thee to my bosom e'er so tight,
...