CRESCENT MOON ON THE HIGHWAY

     (start song  before reading)

Crescent Moon On The Highway

Lying here on this cold and misty Sunday afternoon

Cat at my feet on his blanket

The threat of rain outside my shuttered windows

I listen to Villanelle For Our Time by the master

Of the rough and tender voice

His verse running down my spine like a lover's fingers

Crooning bittersweet lyric into my ears with his distant tongue

The melody caresses me and makes me senseless

As he repeats "bitter searching of the heart" over and over and over

Until images conjure up from memory and lay themselves down

Upon my mind.

You, in that convertible under the stars on that long ago highway

We were laughing like mad people, kissing, more than paying attention

Music soaring on the tape deck 
And ebbing off behind us with the desert wind

My hair whipping around us like long black scarves

And thinking that if I could die of joy, then I would surely die

We were racing under clear cold skies looking for rain and storm

Loving lightning and angry clouds

But finding none, we drove on into the night

Listening to Leonard and holding each other hard enough to bruise.

Look, baby, you said and pointed to a crescent moon
Hanging low in the sky on the side of the highway 
A hundred miles from nowhere

And we pulled over 
And danced underneath that moon

Toasted it with champagne and kisses no one had ever kissed before

While the music trailed off into silence and clicked to a stop
As we stood in the glow of the headlights,
Our eyes locked onto one another

And our hearts as close as hearts can be.

That long ago highway 
And that crescent moon and you

With your crooked smile and wind blown hair

How it all comes back to me now

Damn you, Leonard, with your bitter searching of the heart
and your rough and tender poet's voice

Bringing the past alive and spotlighting the present
with it's loneliness

And loss.........................

Damn you, Leonard.

©by Voo

December 5, 2005

5 p.m.

  BLESS YOU, LEONARD