Valentine 2025

 

Valentine 2025

More moments have passed,

a travail of travel:

seconds, minutes

and hours,

in relentless haste

around the quadrangle of years.

Between chimes,

breaths and breathless

moments

initiate intimations

the touch and touchless

hovering of bees

seeking nectar.

The air trembles,

a kiss,

a liaison,

a sensuous affair,

night-sky silk

on unclothed skin.

 

A peace candle on Holocaust Rembrance day

Shadows in the darkness,

fading memories

waning

with the loss

of daylight

and the dying

of the undead.

Quietude in the noise

and the sobbing

cello

sounds

its lamentation.

A single candle

in the street

says nothing.

A candle

in every street

calls the world

to hope.

Keith Wallis 27th Jan 2025

Ghosts, in memorial

 

Ghosts, in memorial 

The annual wraith of war
stalks sensitive earth,
leaving blood-stained trails
haunting tendered lives
with its heavy boots.

Ghosts, in memorial,
gather around
gatherings around
memorial stones
and half masted flags.

Poppies, in abundant echo,
badge lawyers and teachers,
housewives and doctors,
nurses and drivers
who have never ventured
before gunfire,
nor skirted craters
in a rush to oblivion.

The holy water of tears
elaborates grim remembrances
of histories shared
or
held at arms length by generations
that poorly understand
the painful chaos of conflict.

 

                                                                  Keith Wallis

Beyond the moment

 

Your eyes steal you away:

the steely prison of the moment

cannot stop your escape.

Baggage remains unclaimed,

discarded, abandoned,

shed in the journey

beyond this moment.

The shadow of a kiss

stays, soft and silent,

imprinted on your lips

like unspoken words

held back for fear

of losing them.

The moment has stolen you

in its moon tide;

sails,

winged with wind,

draw you distant

to the echo

of a sound

yet to be made.