Phantoms

When you left I searched the house for hidden traces of you
A strand of hair, a muddy footprint from when you flew
Away from me on a train; perhaps in days of old
You would have clattered and clashed through fields white with winter
cold
Ploughing your acrid way through air thick and bitter with steam
While you sat back and dozed, eyes flickering, engrossed in a
dream
Do you ever think of me as you sit there, eyes floating like wind-blown
lanterns
Looking back at you through grimy glass; as I walk I see phantoms
Of your face in faces strange to me, in eyes of brown your burning eyes
of blue
In weathered, wrinkled leathery cheeks the smoothness of your skin so
new
To the wearisome troubles of this busy world; do you sit and
think
As green blurs by, as houses soar past like meteors amidst the
clink
And jarring clash of metal on sparking metal, what might have
been
If I'd turned to you and told you I love you, one distant time, one
distant scene
Do you see me in your neighbour's face, in the glitter of his eyes, the
shape of his lips
Do you hear my voice in the hiss of steam, the lonely howl as the
bitter wind rips
Through fields that sparkle with winter's kiss, like fields where we
walked
Years ago, that frozen, touched with frost, crunched as we talked
Of our dreams, of the future and you swallowed me in your ocean-deep
eyes
Until the moon tugged the tide, left me standing on rock so ancient and
wise
That it told me you think not of me, but of others
And gone are the days when we danced as lovers.