Sandalwood

They are playing that song again The one that reminds me of you It began to rewind as I turned up the dial from a place long ago that's been bleached for awhile "California Dreamin" sifts through the air like the sandalwood incense, that used to be there. "All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey I've been for a walk ....On a winter's day" There's an image I've kept, still tucked within my mind It used to fill me with envy, until it reckoned with time You at twenty-one, wild and beautiful in a way that I could never be Perched upon your back-porch steps, beneath the russet trees Soaking up the morning sun, stroking your guitar I only knew you then, as that 'hippie" type of girl The one who lived next-door that year Your candles shimmering, bangles glimmering A tangle of strawberry hair, that flirted with the wind Childlike and fair, devil-may-care, long gypsy skirts, and a peasant look that took one's breath The faint scent of sandalwood, swept into my yard from your wide-opened windows, wide-opened doors, while I was wrangling a baby on my hip or hanging bleached-white sheets onto a clothesline I had often wished I were you, ... flitting about, barefoot in the morning air But, I was teaching my toddler to tie his shoes Both of us twenty-one, ... on two sides of a cedar fence, ... a thousand light years apart "All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey I've been for a walk,...on this winter's day All the leaves are brown. Songs have come and gone Seasons had their songs, but what became of you?" _____________________________________________________