Violet Moon

(I wrote this poem as a filler for a student magazine I moderated a long time ago. This poem was inspired by the what-ifs that I and my wife used to talk about.)

There once was a cowboy
who was tired of riding the blind horse of time,
tired of wearing not a cowboy's crumpled hat
but a failed knight's broken helmet and heavy armor mangled by dents.

One starry night he was blown by the wily wind of destiny
to the room of a princess;
a princess distressed by her sleeplessness,
a sleeplessness caused by a pea of desire buried deep under her mattress,
a desire to horse around
like a cow girl chasing fiery sunsets,
sunsets that wet the corners of her soul's mind's eye.

And they talked 'till the birth of dawn,
and on to dusk,
about sunsets and horses that never were part of them,
but were in them,
and of how life should be written in free verse
and not with the chains of versification and metrical form.

And they wanted to talk some more,
but he has to be on the road before the mad swirl
of the meeting of the then and the now
sweep the two of them away
to a time and a place that never was and never will be,
for the cowboy was a cowboy and the princess was a princess,
and a cowboy has to be on the road,
forever riding the blind horse of time.
and the road was not where a princess should be,
but it could be,
if the princess would just let it be.

But the princess was a princess, and the cowboy was a cowboy,
and the cowboy had to go,
for it was late in the afternoon and the wind was singing a dirge to the dying sun.

So while the late seagulls forage the shore, he bid her goodbye.

And on the road the cowboy rode again that blind horse,
slowly out of her sight,
as the last of the sun bled on her sky,
just moments away before the hand of time
started hanging stars on their firmament,
in memory of the beautiful should-have-beens
that the two of them did not allow to live.