Once Upon a Time Poems

Two Troubadours

Let us trot together up the hill,
Avoiding the spurs of a lifetime,
Love-knots thrown away with outhouses,
Old mattresses, and “nickel-and-dime”.

We’ll look down on this town one more time,
Your wet nose sniffing the frosty air,
The frumpy fur, head bent toward me,
Those pawprints on the snow with flair.

With my cane in my droning old age,
The last rocky hill I’ll dare to climb,
You, my anchor, I have dragged along,
My pet, my friend, my kindred sublime.

Struggling to release my ninety years,
Sometimes I imagine myself a ghost,
There’s no particular next-time-around,
Shadows of presence with poetry lost.

I weep, you whimper, two troubadours,
On a movie screen with future blank,
Landscape bleached white, color of nothing,
Stories shiver; life has been a prank.