© Steve King
All rights reserved
That night you chanced upon the old
café,
I recalled times we had so
long ago.
Not just the words, nor how we
sounded then,
but in the
way our eyes would speak for us
to top the clamor, and the way our smiles
at once would
satisfy each hidden care.
The while
you spoke, I pored over your face.
I saw the
things the years worked to deny:
youth,
innocence and infatuation,
wrapped
in the folds of some fine elegance;
a legacy
that showed your gaze, your smile,
framed just
the way an artist might have done
to hold
it for my ideal vision.
I needed
but a curve, a shadowed line,
one
turn, one scent, to seize the whole again.
When you had gone, your space was resonant,
grace
notes alive to theme old worlds anew.
I took your
picture, needlessly, I know,
for I
will never look to you that way:
that
image would not so deny the years—
cast by
the bottled light on plastic screen,
recording
but a shape, without your forms;
hard
vestiges that point to your old griefs,
the changes
you accrued in long absence,
the weight
of secrets never meant for me,
and gladnesses that I shall never see.
These speak
not to the pleasures in my eyes,
that
choose to find only what could not be;
nor to the
hold of ancient promisings,
and old
sirens that sang too long to me.
This
week’s post for Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/
and The
dVerse Pub OLN on Tuesday
