Cornerview

Was that you again, just around the corner of my day?
Almost there, then not, a whisper, a whiff, a sigh,
Then gone.
My mind was floating without future through the sky
among the gulls and the kites, when
without warning, I felt the breath of your waking
there on my mind's cheek,
triggered by an urchin in whose eyes
I saw a memory of an October day
when you and I held another child's either hand
and gave him together a gift of light and festival.
I remember that whim in a moment's stirring.

There you sit, sad and sighing and wistful, on the edge
of my mind's eye.
You, child of twilight, full of secret smiles and tears.
Now I see you, now I wish I did.
The passing fragrance of someone else's hair
suddenly wakes an afterthought of your sleeping head,
and your curlicues of soft locks,
as you cradled your head sleeping in your palm,
with your child's smile of secret contentment,
after a day of rain and surf and footsteps in wet sand,
I turn to face the memory.
But it is gone.

I see you rise, like  a touch of incense, out of a moment
when I no longer cared.
It was a bleak day, and it was a spot on a street
when you once suddenly held my hand,
by surprise because you thought I was not looking
and you didn't know you cared.
And I turned to see your eyes, and they were shining,
and I looked up and god was there.
I reach out now to touch the moment,
but it is gone.

Stay in my life, fatamorgana.
Stay like fall leaves that flutter in the wind before winter.
Stay like wishes that escape an indisciplined mind.
Stay like an afterthought that flees a wayward thinker.
Stay like petals that hold to the stem
     long after flower has withered.
Stay like a breath of a distant wind
     in a room with only one window.


But stay.