17 January 1985

I have no expectations for love’s happy endings any more,

I place no faith in fairy-tales: life taught me the score.

As in the stories of my girlhood, the soldier

In his colours bright,

His sword at side, my hero comes;

Well, it seemed for me this time

It could be right.

Or like a beacon burning

To show the ship its way, 

Love like the light, and not the rocks

Perilous by the quay.

I gave my heart away completely

One - last - time,

I had no thought of rescue,

But of love I thought was mine;

I watched not in the sunshine for a storm I feared would come,

I felt in me his calm deep sea, a deepening in the dawn - 

His crusade of love repairing the broken and the torn.

Now I don’t believe in ever-after, for while a soldier’s role he played,

While he healed the wounds cut through my soul

With the trust my girlhood dreams had made,

At some point that it was going on, slowly weighing down forever,

His stony path was growing heavy, or there was a change in the 

weather.

I shall fight until he holds me in surrender free,

Or until the sea-cliff’s wink subsides, coldly overtaking me.

Then I shall know for certain my lifelong question:

Is love a beacon and a soldier, or a heavy sinking stone?

© Anne-Marie Hicks