PINING WOMAN

Read the next post first, then you will understand why I wrote this.

PINING WOMAN
By GW Hogg
September 17, 1998


Louisiana fires are burning somewhere,
tonight.
And I sit here wondering
where the chard remains are buried.
Monroe, Kansas, Idaho, California,
have all been touched,
or torched.

Week after week
we heard your quiet voice
Speak of a lost lover
felt your passion,
burn.

For the man you loved
was somewhere else
married to another,
as are you.

So I began to wonder
about this woman
aflame with passion
for the man she could not have.

Why did she leave?
What was the sin of their affair.
And was it the forbidden
that made it burn so hot.

And I pitied her,
being torn from the man
who lit her fires.
And wondered why she left him.

Then I realized,
that my pity.
belonged to another,
her husband.

For she was lost
before they met
and would still be lost
when she left.

The poor man
could not comprehend
her pain for another
nor ease it.

And in her attempts
to replace the man she cannot have,
Who else would her fires lick
besides my classmate?

I try to comprehend
this passion that she feels
compare it to my own
and do not understand.

For my passion sleeps at my side.
a constant ember,
always ,
ready to ignite

And the pining woman will know no rest.
For she cannot be happy where she is,
and will not find joy with him
Will only death’s embrace
extinguish her fires?