The Shimmer

Faintly in the morning glimmer

Beside the foggy stream and lawn

I glanced up with a heavy yawn

Snatching the sight of a shimmer

At first I thought of this thing naught

It was the dew, which leaves yet shorn

In such a morn have often worn

It was but this, but naught, I thought

But the shimmer, it had not left

Trailing my gaze like a trained hound

To left my eyes, to left it bound

Like a good thief in search of theft

Only the faded grey lodestone

Then heralded the rising day

Another day of dark dismay

No lamp nor light; I was alone

So what could cause the shimmering?

Some theories dumb, I murmured soft

Like when my lover left, I murmured oft

With teardrops hot and glimmering

Dimmer than flashes from the stream

Yet brighter than my lover’s eyes

Rejecting eyes, a loch of lies

Reflecting in my every dream

Perhaps some ghost or specter’s curse

A vigil keeping in the dark

A flicker of a life, a spark

Afloat alone without a hearse

So many nights a vigil kept

With thoughts of my sweet lover fresh

I can’t forget the feel of flesh

Though I forget when last I slept

For how my lover haunts my sleep!

A sprinkling voice like summer rain

With lips that left each unseen stain

No tears can wash those stains so deep

As the small shimmer fast approached

I asked if it was forged by smiths

Who dwelled with dregs and with my fifths

In marshy nights so often broached

The only answer I received

Came from the shadows of the morn

In such a morn where silence born

Is but silence for the bereaved

Perhaps my lover came that dawn

The shimmer springing to and fro

Though what it was I shall ne’er know

For in a blink, the shimmer was gone