Summer of 1970

oh such sweet love I never knew that summer weaved in 'forty-two spiced, tender tales, attended, torn for sake that I had yet been born a moon-enchanted, gangling boy who took for granted childish joys such wisdom I’d quite failed to see for that same lesson came … to ME yes, I knew well those aches and tears spent on one lass far past my years who brought adulthood much too soon and filled one moonlit night in June with wild thoughts, confusion, love flesh, blue, daubed by that orb above things I should not have yet been shown that found most others fully-grown but time has proved one mys’try, true this clear and poignant deja vu not dreams recalled, but things once real that I still touch, see, smell, and feel her quiet poise, her stirring stare the pressed lace ribbon thru her hair her hands that fit like gloves to mine and tick-tock hips with dips, divine but though she guided tender, sweet so much for me seemed incomplete what she had shared with meager cost had left me heartsick, dazed and lost now gone, a bloom of cherished worth that comes but once, from death to birth those passions of my flesh - unsure found mind and heart, years premature still, there it lay, a blossom plucked that through the years I'd deconstruct to search for sense within those beams of moonlight, meant for older dreams the change she wrought, I can't express I still deep-parse that manic mess and I shall not soon grasp the "why's" she’d made me her lust's callow prize still, ALL was not such tragic deed for she had sowed a wondrous seed that riddle she’d seen fit to start had spun dark magic in my heart And I still taste that herbal bliss - her tresses trapped between our kiss I still see soft skin bathed in beams … and swim her eyes, deep in my dreams. Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, November 28, 2022 ( number two pencil drawing by Gregory Barden )