I Remember You
I remember you, still wet behind the ears.
Abbreviated ducktail, sideburns,
Black boots, peg leg pants,
Black shirt and black guitar,
Held tight against your heart.
Words and music, a menagerie of song,
Already forming in your head, creating magic.
I remember you.
Ivory buckskins with beaded tassels across your chest
And hanging from your sleeves.
Brown hair laying lightly against your brow,
And falling down below your shoulders in unruly waves.
Sultry lips and light brown eyes with hints of hazel, as deep as any river,
That somehow touched us.
Introspective and shy, but winged and ready to fly.
Notes and words came from you,
Floating on vellum paper, drifting across the rooms you played,
Filling up the empty spaces.
Sparks of green and blue flying from your fingertips as your guitar strings hummed.
I remember you.
Older now with gray in places never touched before.
Black dress pants, white shirt, bolero jacket
And a butterscotch voice.
Those same wings unfurled, in full flight, soaring.
Daughter’s, coming to see their mother’s secret lover, and falling too.
Words and music stacked in decades,
With new ones dancing in your mind.
A halo of green, blue and gold stretching from your fingers,
Then raining down in soft drops for each of us to feel.
So many hearts trying to reach you,
The world could hear them calling.
Now here we are, decades later, both of us much older still.
Silver hair cut short, black shoes, dressed in a much more casual fare.
Wings stretched wide, entwining us all in total comfort.
Completely sure of who you are, the circle is complete.
Aware of what has come and gone,
And secure in the rightness of where you’re headed, you smile.
Still, with every shrug of your shoulders, swivel of your hips,
and that hiss that ends so many words,
Colors of the rainbow merge around you, then float away to us.
I remember you.
And when I fly away, I will take a part of all this with me,
The songs and voice that took me from the girl I was,
To the woman I became, etched in my soul.
Just as the words you penned, are etched in my mind today.
I remember you.