Don’t wait

“Don’t wait until I’m dead,” she said,
“to say what you mean to say to me.
Seize the day and tell me straight. Don’t wait
until it’s far too late and I am far away.”

Easier said than done, I thought. For we are not taught
to express thoughts of love aloud and unchecked.
Though we are brought up to show we care, there
is always an air of reserve when such words are aired.
Embarrassment sets in and a dryness in the throat begins
to thin the lavish praise we wish to say until we are left
with a hug and a grin and the silence is filled with telepathic
misfires whose well-meant meanings will never be received.

Don’t wait forever; for though we never expect
that day to come along,
when it’s been and gone we’ll wonder whether they ever knew how strongly we welcomed their presence in our lives.

More poetry

West Pier

The burnt-out shell of the pier out west
sails through the sea mist like the Marie Celeste;
this ship cut adrift amidst the passing shoals of ghostly fish.

Stalking the shoreline, its stilts in the quicklime,
the echoes of the fire silenced in this milky mire.
Black and brooding, wrack and ruin,
a hulk of skulking, skeletal gauntness.

Haunted by the memories, the gaieties of yesteryear,
taunted by the frailties all man-made creations
must endure.
Peer beyond the smoky glass and hear
her roaring glorious past.

© Alan Kenneth Kite