An Old Soul, Whispers.

Press play before reading.

Salute.

(A lone voice whispers)

Are we all but made to know sweet love

My child

To then lose it so tragically

Only to try to covet it again

Are we silently compelled to feel the sharp taste of being heartbroken 

From birth

To seek someone new

Here on Earth

To take away the sometimes endless feelings and anxiety linked to pain

After we receive our new name 

Are we all born alone like lonely lost figurines 

Only to unconsciously seek true friends 

To help us along the way

As we slowly walk towards the very end

Are we all but just human

Men and women just constantly reborn 

To live through a new campaign 

To atone for sins

Perhaps committed when we were first here

At the very beginning 

Way back when

An old-time when love was free 

And you could be anything you once prayed to see

I still remember when I too once met love

A stunning red-haired girl called Lucille Dela Moore

Swimming voluptuously in a wicked world of beguiling emotions

One day as I waded knee-deep 

Into one the worlds many blue oceans

Her name is a blazing memory of happier times

For a brief moment 

We loved and lived in a world of new and old love crimes 

Making love

Telling stories and revelling in all its newfound glories 

But now set free by disease from my previous human life

And awaiting my time to be judged

Standing in line 

With so many fathers mothers sisters and brothers

By this Great Old Portals Rock

We all now stand upon

I sometimes wonder 

In the quietness of this omnipotent darkness

I'm stuck in

Does she still remember me

My beloved Lucille

From when we first met

Many years ago

In late November

When her dim yellow light

I once did see

A thought still lingers

Was that single moment just the doorway to one of my earthly sins

Will I forget her 

Like all the rest of my life   

In this 

The threshold to the very end 

Like the cold Winters winds

That I once used to feel

Which blew in so effortlessly in from the West 

When I ascend

Will her name be a mere footprint in Times logbooks 

Of wet never-ending rhymes 

Is my now deep love for her 

One of this life's subtle sins

The Toll Keeper in the Great In-Between 

Will eventually call in

When I'm eventually reborn 

Into that persistent old domain 

To pay for my previous love crimes

Tasked to not feel but to just walk alone 

As a divine payment and retribution for foolishly abandoning 

A gift of free life-changing love 

Called Lucille

In my previous lifetime 

Copyright John Duffy