Soulmate

"The tragedy of human existence is Fate." So says novelist and poet Jonathan Lovejoy, as his thoughts open this small collection of grief and longing. Written near the end of a tumultuous 24 year marriage, these simple rhyming poems are a reflection of a love that was greatly longed for, but would remain a hopeless heart's desire. The poems appear to echo an inner sense of missed opportunity, and the tragic passing by of a soulmate that the author met in a university hall-a chance meeting by mutual eye contact and a pricking of the heart over 20 years before, several months before he married his wife-having passed this mysterious young woman by many times over a lonely, winter landscape of a southern college campus, but resisting the urge to speak to her, unable to traverse the barrier of his own natural shyness, loneliness and isolation. Born from a lifetime of regret for what might have been, these simple exercises in rhythm and rhyme may appeal to any heart that longs for the paradise of tranquility with a loved one, and the life of love and humility they know they missed with the one who got away.