Phoenix

16 November 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/11/phoenix/

Another day, another doubt, as doubts grow taller
and threaten to block out the sun. Was this hope
a mistake, or is doubt the mistake, or is this
all a part of the cycle, on the road to ourselves?
There will be no coming together, that much seems clear.
Now I only can hope for beneficence, that somehow
my impact was good for both sides, and in time
this may prove to be so. In the meantime I'll tend
to this dying hope, and I'll let it down easy.
It has had a good life, and the next hope,
which must be its child, will have much to be thankful for
when it looks back at what came before.

--

And yet like a phoenix this hope is reborn
and ascends from the ashes of its own pyre.
It was not a mistake, but a good match,
and this much is true no matter the vagaries of time.
So this hope must turn from the actual and burn
with the possibility of love no longer forsaken,
although this particular affair must end. The phoenix
in winding circles blazes a trail through the sky
from the maze of the heart into everlasting truths,
where the answer is contained in the question,
and the question is found in the asking. His fire
ignites in golden panoplies the empty sky,
surpassing even the setting sun.