Cafés and Memories"There are times that walk from you,like some passing afternoon..." So begins the poet, but he'll end his song too soon. Does it calm his restless soul to be sought and loved by all? Or in his somber voice is there a hidden wish to fall? Will our spirits always lift every time we hear his gift? His smile seems to fade as every grain of sand time sifts. When his older years blow cold, and each friend of his grows old, we hope he might remember every story that he told. And the Songbird used to say "All romantics pass this way," Lonely, disillusioned in some empty dark café. We cannot give up this fight When his verses turn to spite He does not seem to love, but if we ask him, he just might open not his wings to fly, but his eyes, that he might cry years of feeling not quite full, and never knowing why. There are softer summers yet, and we pray till eyes are wet that love may come remind him what the years made him forget. All the sins that he outlived maybe then he could forgive; cautiously set down the weight that wouldn't let him live. When his years have reached the grays of his "Endless Numbered Days" May he smile upon the art that set his youth ablaze, with someone sitting next to him in candle-lit cafés. (The first two lines are also the first two of an Iron and Wine song, and this poem has the same meter as the song. The "Songbird" is Joni Mitchell, whose song "The Last Time I saw Richard" mentions romantics sharing the same fate, wasting away in dark cafés.) |