In the streetlight you’re 18 again,
riding the shopping cart back
where it belongs. The next day
it’ll just be something else.
It always is with you.

The tilt of your jaw,
the warm scent of you on my kitten.
And when you speak
I keep hearing you as if from
the bottom of a deep, dark well.

To think I was once the lucky one,
at the end of that gaze. And look!
Young girls still blush,
and their mothers still rush to their side.
Oh love, Will you never get old?

As for me, I’ve aged disgracefully.
I've slunk down into your shadow,
slipped away from passion.
Along our old story lines
I've lost years and memories
on a sweaty bar glass.

When you leave the room I'm relieved,
yet I'll be damned if I can't feel
the heat of your body
where minutes before
you were just standing.

If I hold my pale colors up to you
of course you enhance them.
So love does not decrease, my friend.
But it changes shape as
it curls itself around change.

You know, I don’t even mind
the years anymore, but I still hope
that like me you sometimes dream
of blue green seas, beds of sand,
or the way our hair moves
through moonlit water.