Like a great painting etched by crazing Time,
So has your visage grown more rich with praise.
His lust to ravage leaves you more sublime,
For age so shackled can all eyes amaze;
But how can youth with years seem yet more strong
When all else tested crumbles to decay?
Even Helen, in patinated bronze
Leaves but a battered memory of her day.
No beauty can hold out against such siege
Even stamped on canvas, bronze or marbled stone.
No icon, born of man, can yet allege
A legacy that ages can’t o’er throw.
Still, beauty’s grace embossed in minds of men,
Endures in echoes wrought by hand and pen.

©Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.

As silent yellow leaves fall to the ground,
So does their passing signal summer’s end.
The green whose glory once did here abound
Resigning to a fate it can’t contend.
So each shall follow each ’til none remain
Save crooked branches strained against the sky;
Each sequent foil on foil but to maintain
That every living thing was born to die.
Still, gnarled branches in warm breath of spring
Do resurrect the glory of past days,
And nascent blossoms with sweet scent do bring
From dead of winter, living hope upraised.
So thoughts of you, when absent you may be,
Are like a breath of spring, to aged me.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.