Inner Treachery

Despair is a dire inner treachery
that these poems lustily would betray,
a bower of fragrant thorny roses
bursting to bloom across an arc of time

night seems an ongoing dark certainty,
until the earth’s spin finds new light’s fingers
and seizes on a brightening horizon
with the waking dazzle of warming sun

there is an inner illumination,
the light of a near sun’s intimacy
upon which despair casts murderous shade, 
fierce though it be, despair’s no match for light

a rose blooms beauty’s heartache of the sun,
summons poet bee to drink hope’s nectar