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Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts

Monday, July 20, 2020

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