I Was the Reluctant Lover
This poem was inspired by a visit to the National Gallery in London a few years ago, and is in fact a rewrite, having lost the words to the original poem I had written
I was the reluctant lover
She was a Goddess divine
I was not as brave as a man should be
And so her heart was never mine
Oh, am I the fool of legend
Am I the only one
Who loved and lost as I never tossed
My hat in the ring till the girl was gone?
And as I look at the picture
Her face and smile come to mind
May we always find a beautiful memory of another
Though we may never meet another of their kind.
I was that hunter with his dogs
Who left the lady sitting naked and alone
To hunt for all the vanities of life
And lost the lady he desired as his own.
A hunter hunts for glory and alone
And relishes the company of his hound
But the greatest hunt is of the heart
And for me will the quarry ever be found?
Should she again come into my range
Then with arrows and hounds I shall descend
And stop the hunt, and run the hounds
And maybe for me be a happy end?