TRAFFICKING IN DREAMS.

Oh love and summer,  you are in the dreams and in me…Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

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TRAFFICKING IN DREAMS

by

Jamie Dedes

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Sitting on the worn stone steps of summer

on salty Brooklyn nights in Dyker Heights

with our senior year pending like a threat.

Jamming sessions.

Sharing hugs.

Sipping cokes.

I sang you, my first song. You played me,

honeyed melodies in B on a new guitar.

·

Stan on his Irish frame*. Jim on horn.

Your sassy sister chorine** sprinkling

silver star-dust. We trafficked in dreams.

But faith betrayed, a rusted rudder;

your future a rose-bright moon

falling sadly into a turquoise sea.

·

You’d drive me home at dawn

in your dad’s blue Nova, into a

violet sunrise, deep purple maples

standing guard by mom’s place.

Now gone, you and the old roost.

·

No more of your music. No old friends.

Just meandering the strangest streets

mumbling something off-key, strumming

the memory of you, a new guitar, and

the summer we trafficked in dreams.

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© 2010-2012 poem, Jamie Dedes, all rights reserved

Photo credit ~ Petr Kratochvil, Public Domain Pictures.net

* a bodhrán drum.

** 1920s American term for a chorus girl.