Dreams of Youth

Some feelings revive only in fleeting

dreams of youth, pounding across consciousness

as waves crash on wet sand, a sensation

of former wholeness cruelly lingering,

amnesia not of memory but love.

Awakening strangely, I remember

your gaze as if I had seen you only

yesterday, your features flashing briefly

before vanishing, emotions rebirthed

that convulsed my throat with forgotten awe –

thoughts emptied for a few precious seconds

of the terrible burden of language.

Words alone could not revive those feelings –

that former mixture of terror and joy

which once upon a time froze me in place.

Only a profound and mysterious

magic can stir them from their deep slumber,

awakening unlooked and unbidden.

Your face bathed in a shimmering column

of light, motes of effervescent dust rose

up like ascending angels, the air charged

by energy that a moment before

was wanting, a tonic compressing time

into the immeasurable vastness of now.

The radiance of your features drawing

me slowly forward, life slipped from my throat

in small and terrifying bursts, something

corrosive detaching itself from my

psyche and fleeing in terror, banished

by the choice I had impossibly acted

upon. My heart pounding in the moment

was faint when compared to the emotion

I felt when you returned my smile. As you

gazed frankly into my eyes, I feared that

nothing could fill the terrible yearning

experienced in that moment if not you.

Only in the stillness of night do your

alabaster features return, like a

latent image scored on my retinas.

I lose myself again and again in

your bright, sparkling eyes, your beauty renewed

by gossamer remembrances of light.

The emotions lingering, I am slow

to remember we are no longer young

till your white hair appears in the dawning

and reminds me of the distant years

between our simple quiet life and the

passion felt in those first, wondrous moments.