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.
Pencil Notes 