Shimmer

I felt pitch black

Back then

Shimmering

Lit by an invisible

Tremulous light.

Revelling, in the anonymity

Of life lived at night

Unpegged and unfettered

From standard rhythms.

It was a blackness, interspersed

With long drinks

At convenience store bars and park bench counters.

Where buoyed by the intimacy

Of the enveloping night

Words seemed too bare

And only gestures, strikingly true.

Now, I see tan grey in the mirror

The grey of the canyons and mountains

I inhabit.

Where waking early

With the rocks still cool

I return

Only after the sun has baked them clear.

Thinking, like those rocks

Time has taken and changed me

In various ways.

The flame has shortened, grown compact

And I ask

Does it shimmer still?

The answer, finally

Is yes.

But it is the shimmer

Of a worn river stone

Adorned occasionally with sparking light

From the passing water overhead.