A New Song Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

She was talking,
addressing me,
just words of course,
to shoot the breeze,
to place a cover on
that ever-present gap,
the sound of silence,
so common when
two strangers speak,
pretending to be fine,
relaxed and in control.

There'd been a silly past,
of never-ending hurts
each time a stalk, a leaf
of poison ivy, rubbed in well,
and so it would not end
the darts would really fly,
the battle escalate to be
a public nuisance on its own,
flaunting its nasty grin
and innuendo from within.

Incongruous it was, I see
attraction, once bizarre
may hang around our lives
and titillate the idle mind.

The day it rained he looked,
to gather words, bland and inept;
a man must justify his deeds,
and point his finger at the weeds.

Alas 'twas not to be, he found
not what his stategy had sought
but sounds of soft intrigue,
like violins from Klingenthal
where catacombs deep in the ground
send back their echo to the folks above.

And he, a connoisseur, sat, stunned,
while still denying what could be
in some dimension of his life a truth,
reality perhaps could overcome
that which was staring with much glee
into his face; he swallowed hard
and then recalled an ancient pledge,
one must be open and speak nothing but
the truth, as it presents itself, it needs
a bit of courage and he mustered it at once.

There was a treasure for his eyes,
and as he read the many lines, it soothed
his ears as real poetry passed to his mind.
A trance had drifted through his head like mist,
he felt a hand and then his cheeks were kissed.

Of course, a man can be expected to misread
though all her prose was like a lovely sing-along.
And sober hindsight says the words were true indeed,
and on occasion they can whisper a new song.