SONNET NUMBER  20

With a better course and luckier stars
I might have found you sooner and held you
longer, but it was my fate to have you
for only a fleeting time.  Yet such a time

it was that I will never find its equal
for hope, passion, pleasure and a heightened
sense of life eternal when each day burned
with colors so pure and vibrant that I

believed we had found the antidote to death.
Although the cup of love brimmed over it
held a finite amount and when we had

drained it you felt betrayed and angrily
turned away to search elsewhere for another,
but I know with this cup there are no seconds.