Touchstones

Touchstones

I got lost in the heartbeat,
first time I saw your face;
caught up, tied 'tween two left feet,
right time, yet the wrong place

A touchstone, totem, lucky charm,
a bookmark of the day;
safe preserved, withheld from harm,
reserved for those who pray

Brightly coloured stones we hoard,
that whitewash just can't hide;
pebbles gathered on the shore,
lapping with the tide

Fish in streams, 'midst tides askew,
towed under with the dance;
a wish, a dream, to start a new,
a straw grasped, final chance

A squatter in a memory,
so hard to leave behind;
impossible to lose for me
... too easy to remind

A lifetime reminiscing,
the moments that we shone;
not knowing what we're missing,
till the second that it's gone

Thinking back to brighter days,
we almost had in hand;
lost in thoughts, so overplayed,
instead of being planned

Time elapsed in fields long,
with flyers post, caught short;
feeling the tide was wrong,
in undertows we're caught

Streaming dry with wagons shy,
trains wheeled, running fast;
dreaming high of dragonflies,
through fields in the past

with summers high, bereft of fans,
such memories, they rend;
nearly was and almost rans,
run weary in the end

Bells ringing, urgent, vied, spent whims,
a chorus tolling, dim;
a choir singing silent hymns,
a song of unspent sins

Scriptures tight and strangled, bound,
a font frought, running red;
such sutures leave us dangling, found
hanging by a thread

Portraits hanging in the halls,
from time gone by, long past;
hung higher as the faces fall,
such images, they last

Caught beneath a canvas taut,
a distance close to call;
sought, a heat we wish we'd bought,
how cold a night can fall

Burnt into the landscape deep,
with second hand smoke, staid;
Opaque with things we never reaped
with signals sowed, betrayed

Reading deep between the lines,
despite how words can play;
reaching out from cramped confines,
we seek what's on display

A canvas from another time,
a mattress left half filled;
cries of passion lost in rhyme
and reason lost 'neath gild

Cries for help that rang too low,
pleas muted, left ignored;
ships that sailed long ago
to envied, distant shores

Destinations censored, blocked,
redacted sights we've seen;
with expectations ventured, locked,
we wish we could've been

to coves on rocklined beaches, bright,
neon, run the waves;
driftwood boats beached out of sight,
in anchored... shallow graves

Out of sight, yet held in thrall
and never out of mind;
not enough, I gave my all,
... all that I could find

whilst stranded in a heartbeat,
every time I saw your face;
dancing, tied, 'tween two left feet
... wrong time, in the the right place