Whispering Doves

These whispering doves
of words and deciphering of loves
through time and across pages
from out of lives lived
long ago,
they haunt the pale and lonely
who seek through ancient texts
for sympathy and
call the ghosts of their fancy
to haunt them
with romantic spiritual empathy.

These sepulchural loves
enlivened by doves
flying from hearts
of desultory would-be bards
singing flesh to crumbling bones
from quivering passions yet unbled
untried, unknown:
not yet jaded
by sobriety of experience.
They are testimonial script
to wonders of the wit in its writhing,
its striving,
to tame to terms
the more exquisite
tortures of the spirit.

They are ink and paper bridges,
whispering spider-ledges,
upon which perch and nest
the doves
of ancient and modern loves
cooing to one another,
though never having met.