Soon after the sky had cast off
The tattered cloak of night,
And the midnight sun had set,
Helios himself climbed above the trees.
Dancing across the tops of dueling oaks,
Those primordial brothers between the ponds
Who, over time, grew up and into each other,
He sat spinning madly.
Shedding his golden rays,
As a lab shakes and sheds the water from his back,
They fell deliberately onto
And through my open blinds.
And I, stirred by the small streams of light
Cutting through the dark as if empty space,
I opened my eyes, only to close them again.
Lying, silently, I wait,
Tracing shadows as they slowly shift,
Dancing across the dull, white walls.
Fetid clothes lay protecting the floorboards.
The stale smell of smoke lingers,
Trapped in the soft cottons and polyesters
Of the cream throw pillows,
The blue waves of comforter,
The vast canyons of the corduroy futon.
Wine, fresh on my tongue,
Tells tales of the evening,
Lost of late in a world so distant.
My memories slip away like slack tide
Beneath rotten planks of a dock.
Twin cities, London and Paris,
A cold Christmas morning in Montmartre,
The warmth of the café we shared,
All hung up neatly on the wall.
Maps of emotions I never knew I had.
Only the breeze may speak here,
Whistling through the fissures in the wall.