Beauty and the Beast

What can I say of the empty scroll,

of starless days and nights that embrace me?

They might have consumed me whole,

but there was always a hope that was my guide.

Nameless, faceless,  yet I knew it was she,

knowing from her I could not hide.

So many prayers in the moonlight,

staring into shadows on darkened grounds.

To hope without hope for my delight,

to some place without the dread or the fears.

Would I know the joy of happier sounds,

end this waiting of so many years.

And then as from the past I awoke,

so unreal, standing perfectly still in a dream.

And suddenly as though a fever broke,

I saw a face, a light, heard laughter. I was alive.

Crazy, the circumstance, as it might seem,

a day I thought would never arrive.

Still I wait, for what is this she sees,

but a monster in the night, so strange as me!

All I'd give, if her heart I could please,

that she might see the beauty inside this beast.

For in her I discover the better part of me,

and where I my life has not ceased.

But for a word, my sad heart leaps,

for these graces of love are many and sweet.

Secrets kept where love silently sleeps,

in so many words that betray the nature of me.

I would live or die that my life is complete,

and hope a truer self she might see.

Brian Francis Hudon

March 18, 2017