Open up the photo album half buried on the shelf. 

Blow off the dusty cover. 

Turn a page and lightly touch the yellowing pages. 

Remember another time. 

Smiling faces buried in the sunlight, blurred. 

Daisies stretch towards the sky.

Our first words and our first memories

Caught a bird, mid-flight

Take a step back, look with new eyes 

At old familiar stories. 

The photographs tell a well known tale

From the half I'd never heard

The pages fall like leaves, the spiral unravels

I see now all I'd missed

These people, these places and all these nights

You're the ghost haunting these scenes. 

New meanings, new feelings, an altered imagination

Both the sweet and the sorrows

You've been beside me all this time

I just haven't noticed.

Turn to the last page, with its empty pockets

A strange silence falls...

Inscribed in the blankness of the pages

A thousand questions with a thousand answers. 

A heaviness, a kind of sadness

That just lingers out of touch

But I know you better now,

That's all that matters. 

final call

We find darkness in the absence of light.  We find  hopelessness in the absence of faith. My dear,  even my cries are not enough.  Better to smile on all the smiles to show we are of better kind.  To light the candles and stow away the shadows in corners stand. We are not one flame,  but still flickering, we are not one beat, but patter like raindrops against the cold tin roof.  The concerto nearing is final chords,  the grande finale,  the fretful minute of silence,  then curtain fall.  Who to bow to the fan fair then? Yes,  better to smile on that charming smile my dear and bow amidst the cardboard roofs and plaster walls.  After all it is your charade.  Placate me.

Paris: Something New

You never quite forget the first sight of a new city.

It was a cloudy day, and the plane had been folded in a blanket of clouds both above and below. We could feel the plane descending, but saw no evidence of this through the grey windows.

Then, in the predawn light, a threat of light through the darkness beneath us. The thread brightens through the thinning clouds, and all of the sudden the clouds part, and a web of fire scores the earth. We see the grey relinquish the city as if a pair of hands parting to reveal its sheltered treasure, or as a flower's petals unfold to reveal its honeyed center. The city burns beneath us, brighter than the eastern glow that had chased us halfway around the earth. Each thread, joining with each other, converge towards the center of the city, and along each thread, hang a string of golden pearls.

Ah! Paris. No wonder so many fall in love with your fair visage.