Till the Cows Come Home

It seems an eternity, waiting for the cows to come home. They never will, and so why do I wait so long to take a hard look at myself? Mirrored reflections caught in the bourbon glass, fractured and foggy. We drank more than our share last night, and my memory fell down the stairs, rolling with the bottles, bruised, yet always out of reach, a blue moon waning in the distance. The 1960s hover, phantoms of a past we romanticize, awaiting their return as if a forgotten song might suddenly play, but we can never go back, to flower power, to protests in the park, to nights where anything seemed possible. Lost in the haze of our youth. I await their return other things, like an old friend who swore to come back, but never did. Promises dissolving ithinvair, like smoke rings we blew into the night sky. And here I stand, waiting, for the cows that never come home, for the past that never repeats, for the moment I finally look, deep into my own eyes, and see not what was, but what is, and what might be.