This is my submission to the Hidden Qualities contest. Many thanks to traerene [link] for her beautiful picture "Reverie" which inspired this poem.

It's kind of in an Irish folk song sorta style. It's also much longer than my poetry usually runs, and the first poem I've ever submitted to DA.

Due to some confusion about my submission, I'm adding the poem to the description box.

"Eyes Over Memory"

I stare out over memory
To a time that’s long since past.
And every year that’s come and gone
Is fading hard and fast.

‘Twas in my long lamented youth,
In lands across the sea.
Oh, come my young and hardy lass,
Sit here and pray for bitter me.

For long gone is that starlit isle,
The fields and glens I knew,
Where every perfect summer’s day
Had skies of endless blue.

I had me then a true love
And fair as night was he.
With hair as black as pitch or coal-
His eyes were stars to me.

Away across the sea he sailed
To heed great Fortune’s call.
I stood upon the beach that day
Until his ship grew small.

Two years I waited for my love,
For even some small word.
Not even a letter did I receive,
No news from him I heard.

I began to wait upon the shore
From dawn to setting sun.
My family begged me to forget-
I paid no heed to anyone.

One night as I lay tossed and turning,
Singing roused me from my bed.
I stumbled from my family’s home,
My heart was filled with awful dread.

As I made my way toward sand and sea
The singing grew more clear.
And with every word the singer sang
The deeper grew my fear.

The stars began to fade from sight
As night and day did meld.
I saw the Siren in the waves-
And ‘twas my lover that she held.

I plunged myself into the water,
My true love for to save.
The Siren, she but laughed at me
And slipped beneath the waves.

I found my true love in the surf
In the breaking of the day.
The stars were gone from in his eyes,
His skin a shade of gray.

My love was buried in the hills
Far from the sea and shore.
And me, I left my homeland
To see the ocean nevermore.

But listen here, me lassie,
The waves still haunt my mind.
And in my dreams, the Siren sings,
I fear no peace I’ll ever find.