FAREWELL TO DESDEMONA

FAREWELL TO DESDEMONA
by S L Smith

This poem came to the author during a dream.
On waking she wrote the words out exactly as she heard them in the dream.
She dreamt that she and her cat were walking along a path in a summer garden.
Desdemona strayed from the path onto the grass the author could not follow her.
Summer sun slants gold across the garden,
The smell of roses carries on the breeze,
Desdemona lies a-doze upon the warm grass,
Too tired to chase the butterflies and bees;
Her fur is glowing golden in the bright rays,
Her ears alert to birdsong in the trees,
The year is drawing closer now to autumn,
Desdemona,
on the summer lawn,
now takes her ease.
Autumn leaves are falling,
red and golden,
To lie like a russet carpet on the ground,
But Desdemona is no longer there to chase them,
As autumn’s breezes make them dance around;
She lies snug beneath that summer lawn,
At rest,
asleep forever in the ground,
For her,
this year there is no glowing autumn,
For me,
the leaves are crimson like a wound.
Now winter frosts and snows bejewel the garden,
It is a winter we must spend apart,
The snow lies thick and white,
a frigid carpet,
And icicles are daggers in my heart.
Desdemona now knows not of winter,
For her the summer never reached an end,
She now lies in the earth and in my memory,
Waiting for the day we meet again.