Love's Flaming Chariot

The word "chariot", for me is connected with a minor but painful memory. I think is is from the fifth grade. When we sang "Swing Low. Sweet Chariot", I would sing it with two notes at the end, that is, "o-ot" and was teased about it. It hurt.

Years later, on January 29, 2000, I composed this sonnet, its meaning puzzles me, almost as much why I would remember a song we sang in the fifth grade.

The poem would seem to be about love and that little michief maker, Cupid, however, but the ending lines speak of Apollo while the title refers to his chariot, that is, the sun and the sun seems to be that what destroys love and yet causes love to be reborn

It makes no sense at all -- or does it?


The love we used to share, where did it go?
It vanished like a vapor, or melting snow!

The memories I cherished have lost their glow
and what they meant to me: I hardly know!

Of course, we'll always be "the best of friends...",
but why does love, itself, have to end?

Perhaps, to speak of love, the truth must bend,
as Cupid does his bow, in order to send
those frightful arrows into the peaceful hearts
of poor mortals when he decides to start
that soul's dreadful fire, of which love is but a part?

Does not Apollo's flaming chariot
give us death, as well as life, and then
repeat itself, each day, again and again...?