The Everything in the Everyday
A limitless expanse —
In time reborn and unaware
We ventured
And left our hearts to chance:
The magic morn of cupboard bare,
Indentured
But never knowing it was so.
So intimate, so artless —
The world may be a wonder show:
It’s keepers, though, are heartless —
A barefoot couple’s dance:
Ere everything that isn’t fair
Had censured
In-time-reborn romance;
A field of flowers there
Where we’d
Adventured
Young love, what it felt like. A clear Autumn day –
Golden leaves, a blue sky, the bright carnival way;
At fourteen years old with my very true love
A large crowd around us, a few clouds above
The roar and the music, the beautiful girl,
My mind in a passion, my heart in a whirl –
We watched as a pulling glass man did his craft,
And walked our wide circuit from fore back to aft
And we never touched – but somehow she touched me;
In ways that come back now in fair memory.
A crush, I guess, one hardly lasting much longer;
But for that one day, I had never felt stronger
And rarely have since. It was one of those things:
Days when your heart’s dancing and when your soul sings —
When Autumn embraces you, full, as a boy
And all coalesces with love
And in joy
I wander freely in and out of dreams
Along a path where long ago we walked;
By tires on long ropes, swung over streams,
Where crickets chirped and frogs croaked as we talked –
And as young lovers do, we also did.
I loved the shy excitement of your eyes;
Your quick’ning breath, as on that path we hid
And tried our civil hearts to naturalize –
I still recall your look, your smell, your taste;
Each element of your glowing embrace –
To sin not, nor repent, in any haste,
To watch a moonlight shadow on your face –
With you I wander there in ecstasy:
With you, who’s never spent one dream on me
the boardwalk summer: low tide and high feeling, a helpful bit of sun along the way, and music, like a soul-possession engine -- a tastes-like-cinnamon- or-taffy day a kiss behind the pier: a running stallion, a dancing mare with yellow tangled hair, a range of wooden slats for many horses, a galloping within the blare and glare a multicolored night, a mini-vegas: a taste, another taste, a plunging in, a space for two, a tentative exploring -- a map of worlds, that's written on the skin a cinnamon or taffy taste, a blending, a play-it-off amid the swirling crowd, a hopeful kind of glance, a sudden sorrow, a private look that's somehow said out loud a day a night a gain a loss: a growing that no one notices, and everyone -- a summer on the boardwalk of tomorrow, a halting start that stops but isn't done
She walked out on these docks with him
About a life ago
In warm and windy memories
That only she will know
The boy who was her everything
Her fading Summer light
Until the darkness took him
Into everlasting
Night
I’m overwhelmed, it’s true.
Now don’t you fall in love with me…
But oh, how could I not?
You’re here, then you’ll be history…
Then I do not know squat.
You words all seemed to disappear…
I’m overwhelmed, it’s true:
So why not come on over here?
I’ll fall in love with you
With an added postscript.
No one knew it. Nobody.
She held that secret closely;
Her family thought they knew her well
But they mistook her grossly
She loved a man much older, and
Before long, they’d found ways
To steal away for secret nights
And torrid hidden days
They saw her as in years gone by,
All pink and girlish things;
But she knew what they didn’t know
Her heart’s desirings
And love transformed him in her eyes
To something he was not;
In passion’s vision, pure mirage,
No fear of being caught
Yes, she knew what they didn’t know,
Her girlhood left in dust;
That nice girls sometimes lose themselves
Amid
Unbridled
Lust
POSTSCRIPT:
So now it’s ten years later, and
She’s married to the guy;
It never should have worked out, and
I cannot tell you why
The two of them are happy, But
It is not as I’d feared:
I can draw no conclusions, ‘cept
That life
Is very
Weird
