A Toast to Thee

 

 

To whom shall we drink to present or past

to a mistress who boasts no borrowed rhymes

or sadly a lass rolling in the clover of Eyre

to those that are absent or late for the task

Or

to all our dead we loved with sorrow of heart

and the living and breathing

who are still with us now

 

I toast thee to a friend of my youth

who once dear to my bosom and cast away

beyond eternal rim lives alone rotting

away in his bottle of gin

 

He once travelled in the bask of sunshine

standing with virtue as he graced life with

gentle moods so I toast the gleams

and gloom’s of our boyhood thoughts

lived in dangerous alley ways

and neighborhoods

 

I make a toast to dreams that cannot die

but come over me with a chill yet soothe my

restless feeling heart sprinkling my noon of time

with freshest morning dew and kissed by

blueberries growing on the hill

 

A toast to the maidens who’s pillows I shared

and tossed back their long locks and lifted

their bosoms and offered them bare

while flowers pressed about

their feet in bloom so fair

 

God bless be to all those who watched

over my youth and saved me from grace

as I fell from it often to find my

footing at Heaven’s gate

 

Toast not my wretched soul torn and weary

yet give me rest and old wine to drink the gods

slippery juice of grapes plucked from the vines

clinging to the sun drenched southern cliffs

of ancient times

 

Now in the ocean’s deep red vintage melts

the sun we toast from a single vine of which

we drank our fill to taste the salt sea wine

divine as mermaids beauty shone

beyond the coral reefs

 

So let’s lift up our glass for this last

will be our epitaph of tears till early morns

light will flow into evenings dew while this

poet’s pulse races and chases

all the places from days gone

past of so many lost faces

I toast thee

 

© Copyright Vincent Moore 2010. All Rights Reserved.