The seasons of love

I think my last post was a little bit too controversial for some, so moving right along…

Those who have visited cyberseraphic before will probably remember the poem that used to sit on the front page:

A wanton youth spent in the sun
Chasing butterflies
Without a care in the world
Not knowing, not seeing
As she dances among the flowers

Lying awake at night, silent… still…
Straining to hear the faintest whisper
She sings a strange lullaby of things to come
Enticing, mysterious, sensuous

A storm of thoughts rages
Her shouts lost
Unable to carry her voice through the driving sleet of fear and uncertainty

Peering down from a dizzying height atop a cliff
A faint whisper in the wind:
“I love you”

In retrospect, I named this poem “the seasons of love”. It talks about the various phases that we go through when we fall in love with somebody.

In summer (the first verse), we begin as a child. At this stage, we don’t really know what love is, and we really don’t notice that special somebody because everything in the world is new, innocent and beautiful.

Next comes Autumn, the dawning of paranoia – does she, or doesn’t she? We exist as if in a dream, with a strong desire and hope for what is yet to come. Then winter, when we are asked to make a commitment. This is the final threshold to be crossed before we reach the peace of spring. We have reached the pinnacle of love, and although we feel afterwards like we are falling towards oblivion, there is still the echo of the past to remind us why we are here – and that even the faintest whisper can overcome the sadness we feel towards the inevitability of our destiny.

I can’t remember when or why I came up with this poem, but I certainly didn’t write it with this depth of meaning in mind. All of this stuff only came to me a few years later while I was sorting my old notes, entering them into the computer. This poem is probably one of the key pieces that convinced me that I wanted to be a writer, and so there it was on my homepage – while nobody else in the world (myself included) understood its meaning or significance. Well now I know, and so do you…