Tear Stained Memories

Staring at a photo, hanging crooked From an aging rusting nail on his wall Drags back a tear-stained memory… From a time, he’s yet to heal Drawn by the rhythms of the river, He’s a wanderer, a minstrel A brown water vagabond Music flowing from his hands He hears the sounds of children Singing in the street And… the songs they are singing Take him back to who knows when… Erasing memories of the party years And friends he’s near forgot Before all the backstage passes, He’d worked little country halls, and pubs All the songs he’s sung and played, Lay crumbling in the dust All the, now forgotten faces Of a thousand screaming girls Who… beyond bright and glowing footlights, In the loudness of those shadows He’d grabbed and greedy kissed Their bright nail polished fingers Scouring bloodlines on his back And remembers their soft and naked breasts On his blonde mat of tangled curls Now going grey upon his chest Alone, sometimes he finds a grateful silence, When the memory of his music softly sleeps And from deep within that inky blackness Into his mind she creeps And again, her memory haunts him When through twilight shadows, of life’s din He sees himself there before her, kneeling The memory never thins. Trembles overcome him and sinking to his knees Again, he feels his heart begin its drumming Three-four time in his chest He stumbles, a poet in searching desperation, For practiced words he needs to tell her, Such sweet words, now dying, unspoken on his tongue He feels her graceful fingers reaching, Searching for his calloused hand In his pocket he still fumbles his frantic searching For an ancient family heirloom That fits the third finger on a lover’s soft left hand Forged from a tiny golden nugget Decades ago, his great grandfather found The old man with love and caring had shaped into a ring He set it with tiny diamond, he traded for his cart. Love’s little token for his only ever sweetheart Until the day she died, she’d worn it A treasured testament to love And in a lonely outback gravesite Their names are etched on roughhewn stone She sleeps there beside him, so they’ll never be alone. Within all that mournful sadness As they eased her casket down His father passed her jewel to him, That self-same tiny, heirloom, His great grandmother’s ring Now, all these lonely decades later It swings from a chain around his neck And he can still feel his fingers shaking At the memory from that time When he offered her his hand, Something she declined He’s still searching in the agonising, twilight For an answer any answer, To ease his tortured mind Where is that love so tender From that girl from the river, A love he knows he’ll never find Though her memory ever haunts him, He knows deep within his troubled heart she’s gone He prays to wake another day where on the other side To again kneel before her And hear the sound of angels singing Ave maria.