Far away lover, queen of my heart The wind is cold as it sweeps fitfully over the brown heather.  Gulls cry away in the distance where the headland dips its stony finger into the boiling sea. It is winter.  Dew drops of rain glisten like pearls on the stalks of green grass, unburnt still, in this temperate land, by frost with its razors of white rime.

 

I walk over the sodden ground with a vision in my mind; a picture of a face that has haunted me since childhood.  Yet it is a face of a person I have never seen.  Dark is her hair and red her lips; the redness of dark wine.  Elfin is her face with mischief in eyes that have suffered also; suffered greatly from the hardness of this world.  Sometimes I see her clothed in skirts of flowered gauze, wrapping around her form with sensuous caresses; sometimes I see her in paint spattered dungarees of blue denim, moving purposefully to ward some great goal or task.  An sometimes, yet rarely, she is attired in a heavily embroidered jacket of a vaguely oriental style.

 

Her eyes are always, in my imagination, filled with a cold passion – a determination – which makes me wonder at the mystery of her history and to guess tentatively at the lessons of her life. I guess that she has loved and been rejected;seduced and been seduced - priding herself on her seductive skills she has too often, in the end,been the victim of male rejection in all its brutality.

 

Her voice is a little at odds with her general femininity; it is declamatory; she speaks with the formality of a Victorian lady of great virtue.  I can not hear its exact timbre in my dreams but this impression of speech from another age is strong.

 

Her age is indeterminate. She is not young. To me she seems ageless.

 

She is my quest. I know that, somewhere, she exists. And I know that, sometime, I will make her acquaintance.  Yet I also know that we will never meet. I know that her scent and the softness of her skin will never be known by me.

 

Are you her?  Do you also seek that which will never be fully realised?  And am I in your dreams?

 

If you are truly her I need not describe myself.  You will know me.  You will have guessed that I am a dreamer whose  love of visions and magic, art and poems is great and whose skills of everyday practicality are slim.  You will guess at a  somewhat dishevelled artist manque.  You will only write to me if you know, deep within yourself, the power of the feeling that moves me and that also must move you.  You will not write to ask for explanations, nor to express doubts and reservations.  You will know from that which I have written if I am fit to be your friend, and you mine.  You will be a woman as dreamful and as passionate in imagination as myself.

 

We can never meet. My obligations are such that I can never touch the skin of you; smell your perfume or feel the softness of you lips on mine.  But if you are the one… Then you shall never be alone again.  You will feel my presence in your life as I will feel yours. As you walk, I will be alongside you. As you eat I shall be there. When you bathe you will feel my presence. In the most mundane or intimate moments of your life you will know that I am there.


And now, as I write these words on my laptop, sitting on a rock amidst the springy moss, I see that the rain clouds darken and swell overhead threating a downpour soon. Out on the grey waters a lone fising boats bobs between the swelling waves. Out further, like a ghost in the mist, near the horizon, is the pale shape of a passenger boat entering the wide bay.

 

I wait for your reply, my dark angel. From you, my dear love. Write to me.  Write now. I am waiting and I have waited too long.already.