Sweet Torment

Upon Us are the throes of a sweet torment
In distance of long discovery and worship,
Poignant of the calm in a storm's surge
And placid in the pain of Its absence.

For when during work's encumbered toils,
Your scent upon my clothing ruptures my heart
With its rising fragrance lingering; And your lone witness
Of Passion's mark of love left upon the bed
A map of remembered delight like a path
Of contorted anguish upon a tear-streaked cheek.

The countdown of days and hours to when
My flights journey to you became steps of a closing distance
Until I alighted with each touchdown to be in your arms.
Then when the mirror of my arrival, looking back
on a weekend's visit contained with enormous potential
but a duration fleeting as a summer's rain.

With the sight of each blossomed rose,
The colored beauty of delicacy that paints
In vivid repose elicits the contours of your smooth skin
Under the caress of my tender touch.
Or upon the twinkle of bright embodiment your eyes
Hold the heat of the stars locked in a cold prison
of boundless space that recall the fresh impassioned
urgency during our lakeside kiss under their gaze.

And the radiance of your smile as it broadens
To shame the day’s rising sun unfurling
When my distant image brings forth your joy and love.
For fleeting as the lake's ripples, when plunged
Our moment of escape, and at the center of all the broken rings
Of misconception, is our union approaching perfected.

Yet the greater agony of our sweet torment
Is in the threshold of our union when Torment's sweet grief
Washes like the lake shore breeze, and in its aftermath
Of tortured bliss, the you and I in Us remain.