Words Rewritten

I once wrote a poem of medievals,
their two sleeps, two awakenings.
“The first stirring phase came thence in the middle
for the peasant’s night hours did divide.”
Soon, I too, began a midnight phase, a mystical twofold sleep.
During the day my lines were dull and languorous:
“She wrote me daily. I long for her words.”
But, during the mystic hours the verse became:
“Her cursive scripts, her dazzling wit, a few words
each day on the trip.”
During daylight I wrote:
“We did not foresee her deathly malady.”
With my nighttime pen I wrote:
“We did not foresee, did not previse, our
lives existentially fraught.”
My daytime verse was morose:
“There is little time left to read her glowing words.”
At night they were refined:
“For, now we are sure, not long to endure, no pages to share,
the words are not there.”
I wish I had such magic to see her again.
But, she is gone and there is only one line left to write:
“A churchyard stone becomes a home and poets as they do,
they heal and move on.”

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About the Author

Ray spent 21 years in radio broadcasting followed by 27 years as a real estate appraiser. He taught real estate appraisal at the University of Missouri, Ozarks Technical Community College and St. Charles Community College. Ray loves writing and always has. After Ray retired he attained the Certificate in Higher Education in Creative Writing from Oxford University. Writing short stories for the Certificate was exciting especially since he was in his seventies. Since then the genre has become his obsession and he loves to write them often. His email is [email protected]

Ray Shermer
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