Oh love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me…Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
·
TRAFFICKING IN DREAMS
by
Jamie Dedes
·
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.
·
© 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.
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