This began as a pregnant note, jotted down in one of my composition books as I sat in a fast food joint reflecting on the pangs of a friend’s recent betrayal of my loyalty and trust. This note eventually became the second couplet. My friend of many years turned on me quite unexpectedly and I was left stunned, numb, and pensive. I didn’t know at the time that the two lines I jotted down would later expand out into a ghazal that explored a broader spectrum of circumstances involving trust and betrayal.
Default
A field of dreams was sown by the hand of a spoken promise,
but they withered, for your words were merely a token promise.
The light outside is the veil of my great uncertainty;
inside, alone in the dark, I dream of your broken promise.
Your words were fuel for a blaze that warded off the darkness,
but soon the night fell back on embers of smoking promise.
Conviction was a spring that vanished as I neared it;
I was a fool, allured by hints of unspoken promise.
A single hope became the wellspring of all deception,
seeping a saccharine poison, its scent evoking promise.
For years the dreamer wandered through realms of loss and fortune;
adrift on phasing currents, he never woke in promise.
Delusion is a bright-eyed mistress assuring passion,
but time reveals her treacherous ways, revoking promise.
Potential rises like a fog, illumed by a half-moon,
and leaves the unsteady path before us cloaked in promise.
This is my 133rd ghazal.
