Guiding Lights - 1. Poem

Guiding Lights

by Johnathan Colourfield

Within each kiss a light begins to shine
The first kiss,
A blind light, each party never quite sure,
Till one makes the move,
However gentle,
However meaningful,
It’s the one that lasts forever.
You stay there,
Your lips connected,
No murmur that could ruin that perfect moment.
The boy you kiss may have kissed before,
May have explored beyond the mere barrier of the first time
And yet he finds himself completely surrendered to the boy he is kissing,
His light shines a darker residue of red,
Showing his mistakes that haunt him and your light,
Beyond the pure innocent glow of a dim white,
Waiting to be stained.
When you break that everlasting connection,
You stare rhapsodically into the lovers eyes
And the event has passed,
You then realise its
Imperfection.
The way your lips met and your noses brushed against each other,
The way you hesitated to approach, horrified that you would make a mistake,
You are scared of hurting them,
Breaking their soft touch,
Yet you savour it,
The location changes with each of us, but the meaning stays the same.
You would not change any of it for the world,
It was imperfect, but it was
Imperfectly yours.

Then the last kiss,
A dying ember of what once was.
Some are ready for the light to leave,
Others never want to lose the life of the light in the one they love.
The location changes with each of us but the meaning stays the same.
You hold your husband’s hand through it all,
Some guided by the dark light through a life of change and danger.
Some guided by the innocence they once had, just before
The first touch,
The first lick,
The first exploration.
The lights between two lovers burn bright,
It’s the first love with so very few,
But with many it takes so many guiding lights to put them on the path they deserve.
You hold them close to your heart
For an eternity it feels,
But you know it is almost over.
You touch your lips to theirs,
You feel the light slowly dimming,
You hold onto the kiss,
You onto your guiding light for as long as you can,
You act so gentle,
But you know in there your flame is crying,
Crying its slow tears of wax,
The candle slowly losing its life.
But as we all must be taken or leave this life at one moment in time,
You feel no strong breath brushing against your teeth within your mouth,
A thing that happened so unexpectedly,
It should not have happened so soon and then
You see the form of light has taken them leading down two paths,
The path towards the eternal light that has made its way into all of us,
Or,
Simply taken away by the burning of the candle at both ends,
Totally lost,
Totally extinguished,
Totally loved…

I'd like to say thank you to my off site editor Uncle_Pete, thanks for editing at such short notice!

© 2009 Johnathan Colourfield

Story Discussion