Our Only Love Poem by James Sides

My God
My one true Love
Who heals the affliction of time
With joyrides of my mind

Who drives me to immortality
There are no ends
Only,
The doors close

But, perhaps,
I am left in peace for a while
In post-humous existence
Until my love comes once more to play

To use me and make
The loose change of my sorrows
And the shallows of my brow, furrowed
Into something lighter than air
Of the largest account

She lets ghosts hi-jack my tongue
She dances in my ears and lures me
Out of sin and into sin's grace
Thought is extinguished, as such
And the particles of history
And the sophistries of time
Fall to the ground around my feet
In ethereal columns

I draw shapes in the dust
With sticks of ink and loneliness
But she is with me
To approve of my shapes
And sooth my scattering person.

When she leaves
She is gone
But leaves her belongings in the cadence of my soul, Promising to come back to see them. They are mine.

But she is not mine to claim
To own
To know.
She is mine to serve and to love

I am nothing without her.
She is nothing but the collective
Years of joy and laughter,
Terror and ache

And time is her vain enemy,
While we fight beside her
Not for the cause,
But for the show

Oh here I should do her the honour
Of closing the curtain
But her presence lingers
And my fingers itch for her

For her taste in my countenance
I will die in this place
Not content
But satisfied in the presence of humanity's one jewel

Glittering across the years
Shimmering across our waters
In which we shall bathe
And swim
Drown on a whim

Holding her hand
Understanding nothing
But the saviour of reverie
The fever of love

The gift of our mother
Her itinerant love