AT MIDNIGHT

AT MIDNIGHT

Your memory strikes me deep and hard,
I hear the tolling of the bell.

The dream ignites and reappears,
At midnight when all should be well.

That long forgotten dream of you,
I’ve carried lo, these many years.

It colors all I say and do,
In red and green and gold and blue.

If only I had listened then,
To your siren song so clear and true.

The path not taken is the one I crave,
The years you offered up your treasure.

My regrets will follow to my grave,
A hollowness too deep to measure.

Your name swirls in the sinking sand,
That cruel and catastrophic dust,
It twirls and spins, corrodes and rusts,
And the shaman and the holy rollers
Flee this God forsaken land.

I fall beneath the weight of years
That echo louder than I’d planned.

This terrible tinnitus resounds through my ears.
I’m trapped inside the deadly din
Of all the things that could have been.

It’s hard to pull myself together, to navigate this holy hell.
Your memory strikes me loud and long,
At midnight when all should be well.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2008
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED