Eternity
Aura Thundera
deonii@yahoo.com
All in the still and silent night
The moon shines down in peace
And low is the roar of tidal waves
Breaking on the bulkhead wall.
Tonight is a night when dreamers dream,
The lovers love, and something is free
Warm silver moonlight dapples the roofs,
And softly croak the frogs in the swamp.
Dimly spills the golden light
From the shaded windows.
And the shadows move like puppets,
In an everyday sort of terpsichore
Behind the blinds of the windows.
Even the insects are still in the swamp tonight
And the silver light washes out the stars
All but the brightest few.
A quiet, aimless little breeze
Wanders between the houses,
Catching up smells as it goes
Carrying the damp of bay and swamp,
A whiff of Old Bay from a bucket of crabs
Fresh from the roadside steam shack.
It ripples the water and taunts the sky
But Luna is impassionate as ever.
Distant is a screen door slap,
Of painted wood on wood.
And the hiss of a sliding glass door.
Warmth and music and golden light
Are beckoning within.
A single high-ceilinged white room
Full of worn couches, friends,
And battered paperbacks.
Time elongates with every return.
And music, sweet eternal music,
Older than memory, older than me,
Plays out from the screen in the corner.
Even as the world is stilled,
Something moves to fill the stage.
Time itself, here all time is one.
And one moment, eternity.
He is there, on the screen,
And all the world is his.
For him the sounds of night are still.
Still, still, even the waves pause
And out of the heart of the night
An eternal love is born.
Deep in the heart the night lives,
Deep down, he lives as he was,
That one night in the town on the beach
In a place that is no more.
Enduring are the myths of memory.