My Sweet Muse

There recurred these two dreams

In my days as a girl

Which played over and over again

In my juvenile mind

I could not figure out

Exactly what their meaning had been

The one of red shoes,

Small and flat Mary Janes

I’d wake up believing them mine

When I’d open the door

To the closet I shared

Not one pair of these shoes in the nine

The other, so different

A man in my life

Whose face was always a blur

With his hairline so black

As he spoke in strange tongue

Which in me made my heart stir

As I grew older

The one had been sated

The first time I had bought some red shoes

But the other for years

Still eluded my grasp

Until the day you became my sweet muse



Companion Soul

Of all the places that you’ve been

That you should land up here

A little town of no report

That blessed, fateful year

Little known what lay ahead

A treasure to unearth

But no one yet had chipped the coal

To find such diamond’s worth

Sincerity my chisel sharp

Had cut beneath the char

Of lovers past who valued less

Your soul’s most brilliant star

I’d always hoped such men were real

But had begun to doubt

Until my eyes had opened wide

And my heart became more stout

I found in you a man so rare

Who’d stepped right from my dream

And felt with your companion soul

That love began to teem

Though years have kept us far apart

And time has cast its spell

Deny I can’t, you’re in my being

Forever there to dwell