DESIRES

I have walked with ghosts,

More fearsome than those who haunt houses,

Or, walk endlessly upon old battlefields.

I have walked with guilt and blame,

For things done, not which

Could not ever be undone.

How we dread the quiet time,

The times memory will serve us up,

All the unhappy memories.

Kittens dead, and loves long past,

Might have beens, which now, years later,

We only now know how to make come true.

All the dreams we let slip away,

Desires we treasured, held for years, and,

Let slip away.

• Donovan Baldwin