Tag Archives: melody

by Thomas Davis

On an instrument of ten strings
I will make melody for her,
putting in warehouses waters from the surging sea,
holding in granaries dye-dust of a butterfly’s wings.

O woman, how long you have held me with your eyes:
Night passing to day, and day passing to night again,
time moving like a particle of sand
suspended as a grain of texture in the river’s watery flow.

The thunder of your eyes has made me a stone,
silent, and still, somehow, full of my character,
the colors of my soul blending into skies
and transforming grayness into the colors of stone-like stars.

Putting in warehouses waters from the surging sea,
holding in granaries dye-dust of a butterfly’s wings,
on an instrument of ten strings
I will make melody for her.

Note: The love poems I am publishing were written during the late 1960s and early 1970s during the early years of Ethel’s and my love. Going back to them years later, I am surprised at how much more lyrical my poetry was back then than it is now even though I write in meter or meter and rhyme currently, and most of the early love poems were free verse. This early poetry’s language was often inspired by The Holy Bible, mostly from the Books of Job, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon, if I am not mistaken. I am still writing love poems to Ethel. She, and our children and grandchildren, still provide light to my life.