True Pencil Notes my old friend for you this day

What words can I say that won’t give my aching heart too much away

Regret

Reminiscence

Redirect

Guilt insistence

Survival

Melancholy

Memories

Some nights when sleep won’t come I let it be as it may

Let darkness sit beside me while I contemplate awake

Now and then I’ve watched my thoughts wander to you

I’ve looked but not too hard

Did you ever look for me

What is it we hope to achieve by our reverie

We lost something or we let each other slip slowly out of view

What does it matter

What is there left in this mysterious life to figure out

Drifters sway together parlay awhile then part lose or win

No reasons offered none returned

Last night I searched your name

No rational expectations

No expectations at all

I search places people ideas every day

I am not unlike the I then of the curious kind

And searching just as often saves me from wrestling with presence in mind

When did we last meet

What did we talk about

What did we decide

Who was last not to write

Somewhere and someone else along our crooked separate highways

To unknown yet predetermined destinies

Remember these scenes:

You at the bus stop on Denman in coastal rains again waiting for me

You poised always ready and me stumbling unsteady through time

Both of us watching for what was inside while stepping just outside prescribed lines

We were single raincoat bus riders then

Occupying our cubbyhole apartments in the occupant heavy West End

Why should the smokers have the prime furniture

They have their fog to comfort them

I said there’s no need to send requisitions for change

Synchronized in willingness and deviant vision

Wait for departing lunch people then we’d rearrange

Ah, I hear your laughing voice rise as we struggle up those stairs

What about those bright yellow stockings you used to wear

Bumble Bee woman

That black and white photograph of you and me standing close laughing

When we were both bleach blondes and hopefully young

Matching robes flashing in summer morning’s light winds

Luminescent as our sun licking away Pacific sea sins

So what is your smile doing tonight among these year old obituaries

Smuggling my cat in the No Pets Allowed elevator

His striped tail keeping four/four time from the box

While we avoid eye contact with your suspicious neighbour

Lists grow short as these hours of light

Those who know us knew us when over there before better than or

Still under construction

Oh maybe I ought to have known or guessed

You gave me a pair of desert boots when I came to see you after

The move a long long time ago

And when I arrived home I could find only one.