A Very Long Time Ago and the Cunning Fennec Fox

A Very Long Time Ago

2240 hrs

Yeah, Bravery.  Courage.  Not knowing the outcome and still going forward.

Thanks, first of all, for your bravery.  For the photos and the poem and for your intrepid philosophies.  I see them, these treasures you keep.  I admire them like the fine jewels they are, and these gems, you sport regally.

             I was playing Led Zeppelin’s The Rain Song on my guitar after you went away, that break between writing sessions.  I was playing The Rain Song when I was compelled to go back and read the warp and weft of our words.  I let the tender fabric slide smoothly under my hands; I wrapped it about me like a fever dream. 

It was then I realized how poorly I had handled the whole thing.  I seemed distracted when you were showing me pieces of your heart, and I was wrong for doing so.  But I was lost in the awe; fighting for breath because, I’m afraid, it was something that you said.

            Yet there was so much before that, wasn’t there?  And where do I start?  I could tell you how beautiful you are- how I see you, all of you, a shining woman afire; flaming hair and blazing eyes, clear as the sun, fair as the moon; terrible as an army with banners . . . but I won’t.

            
            So do I pick a feature and sing songs of it?  Just your hair, the color of a desert sunset or the darker under-feathers of a robin’s breast?

            Or should I speak of the mischief in your eyes?  Eyes that come to me from a long-ago dream?  A dream that leaves me broken when I awaken alone in the darkness?  No, these are also things I won’t tell you. 

 That your eyes are exactly how I pictured them?  How I remembered them?  You’ll never hear it from my own lips.

            I could tell you all about your smile, how it peeks from behind your eosinophilic lips . . . but you don’t live for these words, do you?  Too many men have already said too many pretty things to you, and you are not fooled by them.

            I could tell you how happy I was when I saw you ascending the staircase; how I saw you look my way even before I put my glasses before my blind eyes and saw you again for the first time.  

I could tell you that over these many lives you have never changed; ever beautiful; a sunrise in the dawn.  It nearly hurts to look upon you.

            I could let these word slip from the jail of my mouth, but then . . .  you would know, wouldn’t you?  Know how terrible it is within my heart; a dark oubliette with a hole in the sky that is forever out of reach.  You would know the torment; a secret I carry behind a face full of mirth and merriment; of a compassion only lonely.  

You would know my fear, and I would be helpless against you.

            No, that road is madness, and I will not travel.

            So I, with heavy sigh, pick up my pack of secrets and I take the first step of the rest of my life.

The Cunning Fennec Fox

A Lifetime Ago