Sunrise         Chapters & Favorites

City Of Reprieve

City of life, city of death,
a city of reprieve between them.
City of life, the city of Penn,
a reprieve from death in the city of Jefferson.
A gift a prophetic vision in time,
darkness focused into a narrow beam,
dilating the black retinas of my eyes,
a window of day with the night seeping in.

I stop to sit in the twilight,
in the old colonial downtown opened air-mall.
A secret place that these two cities share.
I am frozen in a moment of time,
my mind is split like an atom,
alive in two separate places,
in two separate times of my life
at the same time,
beyond deja vous.
The same bench, the same season,
a summer day in the middle of winter.
Siamese twins
their cobblestone and bricked streets,
the heart of two cities.
Half my life has passed, yet in this moment
I am sure I never left, though many years have passed.
I know without a doubt you are out there, too, waiting.
In the city of reprieve you are there,
so many times we have passed, unknowingly,
the city we share in our hearts
in the secret emotional longing of our minds.
I am sure we do the same things,
walking into the Asian furniture shops,
stopping for a mocha or a cappuccino, compellingly.
Soul mates, my secret sister twin, unnoticed
by the multitudes,
a light of kindness, wisdom, and sensuality,
aloof amidst those who cannot perceive
the karma of our distant waiting love.
love of reprieve, awaiting,
touching our hearts, simultaneously,
breaking the reason of time, liberatingly.
A flood overwhelming our exile of obscurity, unnoticed,
in a massive ocean of self-centered society.
We have not seen the city of death.
The city of reprieve we share,
the vision of your life lives on in me,
my sweet angel,
we will one day meet there.

P. J. Campise
2000