A MOMENT IN TIME

The old fisherman's cottage is crumbling,
like this, our moment in time.
It's very fabric, in turning to dust,
to me is symbolic of emotional rust.

'Hold on to your moment' - the words are crashing
through the fury of the waves
that mercilessly lash this rocky shore.
But our moment is lost with the tide.

Yet, oh what yearning to cling on - to
stop time in it's tracks and freeze
our smiles, forgetfulness of past or future,
and preserve forever this now.

In the darkness of windows behind me,
with eyes in the back of my head,
I swear I glimpsed the restless ghosts
of something we were meant to be.

I'm thinking of the disappointment of marriage,
of the lies we tell ourselves.
For I loved you once more than life itself -
until day-in, day-out intervened.

What good were such naïve passions then:
all that acting-out of impulse?
Where has it brought us, but to this day,
where we pose and pretend for the lens?

Yes, we're different people now:
what love is we're no longer sure.
Yet each one silently blames the other
for all those dreams unfulfilled.

So, who are we now - can we ever be sure,
although all these years we've endured?
It feels like we're buried six feet under -
and yet there's a faint pulse still.

Someday in the future when we're both long gone,
a descendant of ours will discover
this picture and in faded images will find
the story of two lovers.

They'll read of a passion that burned itself out:
of desires of the flesh that told lies.
But they'll also sense in the depths of our eyes
true love at a moment in time.