Bittersweet ★★★★

The restless boy with the laughing blue eyes said
and certainly it must have been
with a sly smile, head cocked
warmly
your poems are always so bittersweet.
And I remember the dutch painters
with their momento mori,
always the bur to twist in our hides.
Things we choose not to look at.
But I do have my kinder ghosts.
Not every sleepless night is haunting.
There were those
spent timeless and drifting
childlike and magnanimous
untethered
dislocated from context.
Splitting the silver coated surf
with bare feet and damp hems,
carousing downtown
under sputtering lamplight,
bathed in
filled with
fae light and fire.
And here, breathless lingering
pressed to warm skin,
held frozen
by soft lips.
I could tell
of a night spent driving through dark,
winding down unknown roads
as if chasing down the dawn,
to watch it cusp
amid mist and mountains
in some place I will never see again,
hundreds of miles from home.
Maybe I will tell him
of the grass on the roof,
or the view of the valley that night,
or how broken glass looks
in the right light
the way we think fallen stars should,
and hope he understands.