Nigh On A Windy Hill

Nigh on a windy hill, just a stone's throw from my place

A lone tire-swing sways.

Slowly creaks the tired branch that holds the rope

The rope whose hemp has softened in the sun

Worn and brittle it frays in the silent air.

It has seen its share of summers,

Been buffered by enough seasons to know their breadth,

To remember childhood laughter now as fading memories...

The summer days had been as golden as honey

Sweeter still than that amber flow,

And the breeze as smooth as silk seasoned by the pollen of a thousand stars.

Their fragile petals nestled among the blades of verdant grass

The blues, the yellows, the reds

Now faded with the gray of time.

The flutter of a little girl's dress

Her knees dimpled knobs pumping along the eyelet hem,

Her shoes of softened leather, molded and supple from hours of lazy play.

Pictures in the sky.

Castles made out of clouds.

Dreams of butterflies and rainbows.

They were capering ponies that pranced about our minds like wild stallions, neon and strong.

Bigger than the world.

So grand, so consuming, so full of delight and wonder.

The sky swallowed us up and bore us on bluebird wings.

The sky a dusty copper above the melting fire of the sun,

The air tasted like flowers, the grass like heat.

The wood of the fence railings nodded in the last of the summer's rays,

Faded and softly aged from many such lazy days.

Piano lessons in the parlor,

The tinkling notes fluttering through the opened windows

Brushing back the curtains in their soft wake.

My window overlooking the gardens, the treeline softening the white heat of the now departing sun.

And my eyes have now seen the dawn and dusk of many thousand days.

The air tastes like smoke as change blows its way past

With it's broom of autumn breeze.

When I look at the clouds now, I swallow the sky

And somewhere in that lonely, endless space within me, is you.

Love was far more complicated than my dreams would allow.

And every word is powerless to capture the illusion that was my awakening,

That nothing will ever again be as simple as those clouds,

Or the dandelion seeds drifting on the wind on those long-ago summer days.