Last Breath - Old Love Poem by Mountain Poet

LAST BREATH

I wonder what I can hold you with? 

From what is mine to give 
I offer you splendid desperate sunsets 
from tired days. The deep smell of wood, 
a city's dying death, and lonely 
ragged alleys in the dark. 

I offer you a million held nights 
gazing at the moon, 
where the mysterious starkness 
is laden lightly with the unexpected, 
and the desirable. In the hollows 

I offer the bitter faces of the thieves 
who seek only to outlive 
the darkness until dawn. 
Robbing even the stars of their glory. 

I offer you the memories 
of mountains, valleys, and towns 
that bloomed before your birth. 

I offer you my ancestors. My ghosts. 
Long dead men who carved their visions 
in marble forums. My Father’s Father 
who sought the cycle of men and moons 
amongst the music of the Centaurs 
and Flying Steeds. 

I offer you the breadth between Apollo and Aphrodite. 
Imperial sons and daughters of Zeus. 
The world’s first poets and propagandists, 
and romantic men who died in ashes 
when Vesuvius erupted in Pompeii. 

I offer you the loyalty of a woman 
whose only bondage has been Love, 
and the daily ritual of my life. 

I offer you the core of myself 
that I have saved somehow. 
The essence of my central heart, 
unaffected by time, by joy, 
by the daylight's saving grace. 

I offer you my thoughts about you, 
explanations and theories about you, 
and surprising news about yourself. 

Yes, I can offer you what is left 
of my daylight, my loneliness. 
The storms and rainbows of my darkness. 

These are my sacred offerings, 
and with them come my dangers, uncertainties, 
and the longful daydreams of my heart. 

Hopeful bribes, perhaps. 
But in giving what gives us pleasure, 
we must also give what gives us pain. 

                  ***

- Mountain Poet, copyright 1973

Written to an old love - musician, songwriter, and engineer - Craig Lloyd.