Into Night

She looked so far away
like a picture lost without a frame.
Some mem’ries I buried in a drawer
came back to life today—
I held her hand once more.

Never thought that we would be so close again
after the absence of the years.
Takes me back to when I was a younger man
full of hopefulness and fear.

I feel her breathing.
The blood in her veins
washes away memory of how she went away.

We walk along the shore
in December although it looks like rain.
Weave a path like pairs of migratory birds
taking flight into the grey—
to hide the loss for words.

As the tide erased our footprints in the sand
we tried to trace our way back home.
This reunion isn’t going like we planned:
reminded that we walk alone.

I hear her crying
softly as rain.
Some things left unspoken just don’t go away.

Remember swimming in the river, so cool and green,
on Sundays far away from town?
And when the ring slipped off her finger, diving deeper down
saw one last flash of light
before it sank beyond our sight.

Dreamed I was falling,
caught in mid-air.
I woke up sweating but she wasn’t there.

Before I closed the book my heart needs to be sure.
I had to see her one more time.
We did the one thing that we never could before
we finally said goodbye.

I hear her leaving
long before dawn.
No need to tell me that she’s gone.

I walk the beach alone
like a drifter looking for a home
in the rows of clouds that look like palisades
on the shoreline of my dreams.
I watch them slowly fade,
fade endlessly into night.

©2005 LApp