Song half remembered

In a café

On a kingfisher blue

Halcyon day 

In a past

So far away

That even

The immediate

Recall of a smell

Couldn’t take him back

He heard

A song

 

It was mellifluous

And soporific

And slow

 

It meant nothing

To him

 

It was wistful bullshit

Up there with

Baskets of kittens

And maudlin messages

In greeting cards

 

He was too young

Too resilient

The song was not

For him

But for lovers

And loss

Silences

And ache

 

One day

After years of

Being beguiled by

Glittering pavements

In winter

And admiring

The hubris of horses

In old Clint Eastwood films

He hears the song again

 

And he wonders

Has he changed

Or has the song?

He thinks it’s the song

 

It must be

The song

 

In the trickery of January sunshine

On a street sharp with cold

It’s so utterly beautiful

So perfectly sad

 

Everything he sees

Is through the absence

Of her face

Her touch

And he wonders if she ever got old

 

Twenty years after hearing it first

It occurs to him

That the thing about

The song is

 

He finally understands it