Endless Dream
I walk the trail, in hopes of reaching you,
As winter sheds her tears of crystal ice.
I rise above snow drifts, the trail to view,
But find my steps alone do not suffice.
On knees I crawl across the banks of snow,
As yearnings for your touch keep urging on.
For strength you grant to me when I am low,
When many times near death my breath has drawn.
But I awaken, as all other nights,
An empty shell, for love has been denied.
Then dawn arrives anew as searing lights,
While frozen tears the trail proceeds to hide.
My endless dream denies a final climb,
But patiently I wait for love sublime.
Endless Bloom
She worries that her softest bloom is gone,
The beauty that was hers in younger years.
She reminisces days of early dawn,
When flawless skin awoke to gleeful cheers.
She frets her steps have lost their sultry dance,
Her slender figure time has cast away.
She dreads her crown to white will soon advance,
So feels it is in vain to hide her gray.
But I don’t see the years her mirror shows,
Instead I view a bloom’s maturing glow.
Her smile, her lively eyes and button nose,
Are still like early days of long ago.
No matter what the mirror says to her,
Her beauty moves my heart with love to stir.
Angel L. Villanueva is a religious man who resides in Massachusetts, enjoying a simple life with his lovely wife, Nina.
“Endless Bloom” is the better sonnet, in my opinion. The language is sophisticated, and the volta is very properly placed at the ninth line. The only jarring thing is the rather awkward inversion in the last line, where the infinitive “to stir” is positioned purely to make a rhyme. I don’t dislike inversions on principle, but they should never be in a spot where their function is too obvious, and they should never be used in closing position.
The final couplet in itself is somewhat emotionally hackneyed and cloying, and ought to be replaced. How about this:
No matter what the lying mirror shows,
Her beauty moves me, and my passion grows.
This adds a zing of anger at the end (“lying”), and a touch of sex to an otherwise fairly sexless poem.
Thank you for the insightful comment, Mr. Salemi. It is helpful. I have been going over older poems with an eye on rewriting some lines, and Endless Bloom may be one I should also revisit. Thanks again.
I second Mr. Salemi’s comments. And the same peculiarities struck me when I read the second poem for the first time. Inversion can, indeed, kill a good line. But I admire, nonetheless, your undying respect for, and your continuing interest in, your inamorata. That’s not an everyday thing.
The first poem rings with perhaps a bit too much desperation.
Thank you for your kind comment, Mr Anderson.