After You Left by James Piatt

“Ever has it been that love knows not 

its own depth until the hour of separation.” 

Kahlil Gibran



The old man watched her shadow moving away 

in the widdershins wind, saw her eyes 

watching eternity through the tears 

of God, and his thoughts staggered 

over illusions veiled in emotions that

there whispering themselves into oblivion.



It has been a long time since he watched 

the years slipping by so quickly, it was

like watching the sun dipping into the 

scarlet horizon, causing his thoughts to merge 

with the dark shadows of his lingering tear drops

as they whispered through his sad memories, 

 

He asks, where is the shared dreams, the 

sugared season of elderly embraces, 

the mirror holding images of special 

hours together, are they all trapped inside

the gaps of time with the threads of

each memory unraveling.



His sorrowful emotions whisper themselves 

across his thoughts like lost dreams, and now

the weary world appears too vague for breath, 

too sublime for an addendum of fantasies, 

and too oblique for the cricket’s melancholy 

nocturnal symphony.



The distance from here to there is 

insurmountable, and now only a mist of time, 

and space painted in vanishing hues, exists: 

The future, forever gone, only to be found in a 

place called Somewhere, that was never reached

in dreams of forevermore.



Memories smolder in the silence of long 

lost dreams, as images of life disappeared 

into tones of gray. He asks why is everything good

gone as he sits among the savage ebbing 

time, which leaves his yearnings far behind, and

his heart and soul empty of meaning.

About the Poet:

James Piatt, a retired Professor and octogenarian is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee and has had five poetry books “The Silent Pond,” (2012), “Ancient Rhythms,” (2014), “LIGHT,” (2016),“Solace Between the Lines,” (2019), and Serenity (2022), as well as over 1700 poems, five novels, seven essays, and 35 short stories published worldwide in over 250 publications. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO.