Category: Personal Poetry

TRANSIENCE
by Michael Langston

A car approaches
along the darkened road,
Its headlights beaming,
Giving a transient
lighted existence
To the trees that
inhabit the yard.

It passes,
And faraway seeming,
Leaves them again
to darkness
And dreaming.

SUMMER NIGHT
by Michael Langston

A warm and windswept summer night
Fills the world with its pale, dim light;
The branching trees surrounding I
Eclipse dark portions of the sky;
Their dancing shapes upon the eye
Sway and sigh.

While in my mind the past I see
In stilled and silent memory:
A fallen snow, the barren trees,
This place the way it used to be.
All dull and indistinct are they;
The color of the snow is grey,
Now having less a presence there
Than given to the summer air.

Yes, dull and indistinct they are,
Absent and removed so far:
The fallen snow, the barren tree,
And love’s cold and distant unreality.

WHERE ONCE YOU WERE
by Michael Langston

Empty space
fills the place
where once you were.

Beside me there:
the empty air,
where once you were.

The space and air,
your face and hair,
are with me there
where once you were,
and for your touch
I loved so much:
a soft and gentle breeze.

THERE MORE REAL
by Michael Langston

You are gone…
and exist for me
as only memory.

I am here…
but back there too
still there with you,
and there more real
than here, I feel,
for there I live
while here I’m dead:
buried in loneliness;
to back there led.

AND THEN
by Michael Langston

You gave my life to me
By loving me
And then…
Took it away again
By leaving me.

I gave myself to you
For whatever you might do,
Leave or stay.
To keep or throw away,
I’m yours.

LOVE COMES
by Michael Langston

The light shines…
and imparts reality
to all things;

The sun rises…
and out of its brightness
the world is born.

Love comes…
and into darkness
new light it brings;

You came to me…
and from our love
my life is formed.

LOVE AND SHYNESS
by Michael Langston

They’d now and then exchange a glance;
And when their eyes did meet by chance,
He’d turn and look the other way,
Not knowing what to do or say.

And she would do the same thing too
As if to say, I don’t want you,
Would look away…but only too
Not knowing what to say or do.

OUR PAST
by Michael Langston

the thing most
irrevocably lost;
what dies…
leaving only memory
in its place,
which itself then
quickly fades…
and in the end
leaves nothing

ROAD TO NOWHERE
by Michael Langston

With all my love
going one way

and with nothing
coming back,

this one way
hopeless highway

leads to nowhere;
your love I lack.

With all my letters
going one way

and almost nothing
written back,

this one way road
to nowhere…

leads to nothing;
I’m turning back.