Finding the Key OR The Amazing Tale of a Clockwork Mouse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

I once knew a devoted couple, one of whom died of cancer. A few years later, my friend found someone new and they have been very happy together.  At a party, someone bitchily remarked, ‘How soon some people forget...’ 

My friend’s new love overheard, shrugged and said, ‘You never stop loving someone, but ghosts can’t even kiss. How boring is that?’

Beneath an awkward tittering, I sensed a general consensus that my friend had made a good choice.

One love can never be the same as another, and it is not fair on anyone involved to make comparisons.

As for me, my (only) partner and I had only a brief time  together and I never really fell in love again after he died, but I live for the love we had and have enjoyed my fair share of (real) kisses since. All the better, kinder, lasting life forces within me I take from that time we shared, even as I take my cue from nature's continuing predilection for renewal. I guess it took me awhile to realise that moving on doesn't mean leaving anyone behind.

 FINDING THE KEY or THE AMAZING TALE OF A CLOCKWORK MOUSE

I walked to the House of the Dead,

lifted the latch and went in,

saw a clockwork mouse on a table,

found the key, laughed as it ran

madly, freely, just as my first love 

and I had with each other

I lingered in the House of the Dead,

clockwork mouse for company,

let it run loose down Memory Lane,

breaking the circle trapping me

in the cancerous, cobweb confines

of a near empty room

I wandered the House of the Dead,

pausing in a bedroom one day,

made love with a ghost, implored it

to stay, but it left, fading away 

like a sunbeam, leaving only space

for a clockwork mouse

I departed the House of the Dead,

let the clockwork mouse go free

till it stopped short at Memory Lane

and saw no cause to turn the key

again, content to continue hopefully

into a slow, tearful dawn

Recalling the House of the Dead,

I see now where I went wrong,

overlooking the drive of life forces

running ever true and strong,

like shadows chasing sunbeams

all summer long

I return to the House of the Dead

now and then in restless dreams,

dance with a ghost on tricks of light

where nothing is as it seems;

of the clockwork mouse, not a trace,

only love in another place

Copyright R. N. Taber 2015; rev. 2020