The First Peril of Love
By Aaron Caplea
The first peril of love
The picture of a younger man-
A sentiment of long ago;
Surrounding, an old woman stands,
Remembering her time:
A boy and girl, both holding hands,
Not seeing where the night will go;
Their unrepentant heads will band
Together, they will find.
.
A girl will lock her dreams inside;
A boy does what he knows:
Himself, agree to never tell
The very girl his name.
The woman can recall the time:
A land that god had sown-
And one that ordered fire set
To any ounce of shade.
.
But every thought of him felt false,
The memories too hard to bear;
Her thoughts did not care to discern
Just what they had been muting:
A girl says, “Boy, you cannot take
My hand unless you swear.”
And all the boy had ever learned
Was lost within her beauty.
.
A boy and girl, both caring not
If death shall ever take them
Will journey off into the black
And terrifying wood.
Old woman cries out to her God,
“Oh, tell me why you damned him!”
To which then, God responded back,
“Because it proved Love could.”
.
The woman, distraught, did decide
She’d walk upon the beach;
She took a glance out at the world
And, this time, only frowned:
A boy and girl start, side by side,
And run until they reach
The rimming of the perfect world-
The fall to Hell and down.
.
And all behind them fades away-
The world is surely his to keep;
They’ve run some distance through the wood;
His thoughts have drifted now, aloft.
For nothing took his eyes away
From her whose features ran so deep
That all her beauty really could
Contrive him to step off.
.
And both had let out a cry.
.
Before it weighed upon the girls
That death was on her shoulder,
The boy was gone forever, now.
.
Down he went so far.
.
Silence filled the woman’s soul;
Not one thing had been bolder:
God made a loving galaxy
The day he killed its star.
