The Orchard

Across the orchard you could hear the sound,
Of love as your mans fist struck the ground.
His cup of plenty was dwindling fast,
Knowing full well that one sip may just be his last.

His anger and torment were dredging his soul,
Weighing hope against fate had now taken its toll.
And only the muffled drum beckoned him then,
The last post and requiem, irrelevant when.

To your man doubt was reason and anger the way,
To somehow create magic, make the death go away.
His love and his life-blood mixed in with the ground,
A curious irony lurking around.

How you both learned the lesson that true loving is free,
Stamped your footprints on tomorrow, made it how it should be.
To make understanding the seed-bed of love,
And watch as the new life drank rains from above.

For your love it lay deeper than gift-tags and life,
The Sea full of comfort, the love for his wife.
The spark of your children was only a part,
Of the love that was pledged by you both at the start.

When your love brought confusion and kept you apart,
How you both held your loyalty linking each heart.
How the love and the longing came flooding back then,
When pure love would mould you together again.

Then the years as the orchard grew fuller each spring,
A caress as the children gathered in everything.
How the harvesting summers brought in more than just fruit,
Adoration and tenderness no more in dispute.

The loss as the children lost childhood each dusk,
As they grew into adults as every child must.
Trials, tribulations conquered now hand in hand,
A mutual power under bilateral command.

People tried in vain effort to chip at the shell,
Of the house of completeness, and try they did well.
But you closed in together to weather each storm,
Snuggled up in the splendour of unassailable warmth.

And the mind-numbing pleasures, beyond description today,
Were to swallow you completely with each brand new day.
To make giving entirely the best price to pay,
Growing stronger with passion to take both breaths away.

How he worshipped your being and dreaded the hour,
In sleep you would close your eyes... retiring flower.
How he'd bask in your breathing and bathe in your dreams,
Catch the shadowy contours, the beckoning beams.

With each sleep sodden breath one more moment elapsed,
Held your love giving hands firmly wrapped in his grasp.
Watched life-giving breath enter, then exit devine,
Her love and her presence all his for all time.

Each day love a prelude of more love to come,
Each passionate embrace the best you had done.
Loves limitations were all cast aside,
The enchanted bridegroom, the enchanted bride.

The glow lit up everyone, all things around,
Leaving envious people on unenvious ground.
They cast their aspersions, fired test after test,
But the bond of belonging served best to contest.

Then friends you had many who warmed by your fire,
Burning deep beneath courtesy, patience, desire.
The beauty of loving had soaked you in style,
And few could resist then the broadest of smiles.

Your adorable femininity holding your man,
In a state of devotion as only love can.
The past was recorded but filed safely away,
For nothing would challenge your beauty that day.

All the doubt and disasters all waiting in line,
To be bundled together and fastened with twine.
When we'd take them together and bury them deep,
For only the wisdom was needed to keep.

How despite all the torment, terror and pain,
You knew in your heart that your love would sustain.
To sit in life's lobby awaiting the day,
In loves ultimate garden, you'd both go to play.

The beginning is written, the end beyond doubt,
The middle is fantasy cruelly left out.
And the future so desperate, so dreadful, unsure,
To sense now this loss leaves the meaning obscure.

How you'd fight to the death without reason just doubt,
As both pushed the head under, then pulled the head out.
All logic and judgement were out as you nailed,
And compassion lacking when either one failed.

The tireless obsession with suspected betrayal,
The blood-chilling destiny, the inescapable jail.
The dreams and the loving lie locked in last night,
As the love you lost yesterday drifted from sight.

Now the pages in your diary are reading their last,
And your mind races melancholy back through the past.
To a day in life's youth, way back when you met,
And wrote our loves contract, an un-payable debt.

His reaper the goal now, with gods love not long,
To the garden of sleep and the nightingale song.
To join the trees and the forces you shared long ago,
Dance entwined through each nightime, and no-one need know.

The death that he then faced would greet every morn,
As he gazes through photographs, clothes hardly worn.
As he searches the air for one trace of your smell,
And strains for the comfort voice, wishing him well.

His one wish for her, that on her dying day,
His hand could grasp hers and chase all fears away.
To know that her young man is the old of today,
Who worships her being in just the same way.

So the forces decided he should lead the way,
And his loving dear teacher will privately pray,
That with the next orchard blossom, the next summers day,
He will call to collect her in his own special way.

Now they bury him deep beneath clouds billowing goodbye,
And you know that above him lies not only sky,
For the flowers that grow out from each lovers plot,
Will reach out for each other and tie in loves knot.

Neil Graham Marsden.