A Week or So Ago

My mother, hands as splotched and wrinkled

as autumn’s falling leaves, said to me:

"It was only a week or so ago that I was seventeen.

Well, it could have been a month, I guess, at most."

I smiled, indulgent at her yearning

for a time so dead, so long ago.

And now I comb my graying hair

and find myself beneath the stars

at that dance from another time so long ago.

A summer’s honeysuckled breath of breeze

blows up the river bank, through trees, and

I, in coat of blue, am serenaded by

the strings and brass and keys

and by the symphony of

your hand in mine, your cheek

a little damp against my cheek,

the whisper of your words upon my neck.

Perhaps a week ago it was,

or maybe less.

Joe Peacock