Robert
#4 of Poems
Oh, if we could have those days we once breathed:
days before more base and profound passions
than our own. Days before obligations.
Days of spirits and beer, of wine and weed.
Days when you fought for my beliefs,
though they were never your convictions.
We drank not from grief, but in jubilation,
for our triumphs no more than our defeats.
Robert, you were the only man, not family
I've ever loved, without a single wanton thought.
If we could live those days, again, we ought...
...but we know that will never be.
I once said that life is but a series of moments,
and that these moments, more often than of revelry,
would be of death, disease, agony, and injury,
but a small few could be of contentment,
and smaller still of true, unadulterated bliss.
These were the moments we sought to keep hold on.
For the truest measure of a season
is the weight of all its moments when they're dismissed,
and that was how we drank in those days.
At empty pockets and eviction notices we'd grin,
but we knew those moments soon would end,
and new ones would take their place:
new sorrow, and new joy. But thanks to my lost foil,
when all my memories are astray,
and all those that I've had are weighed,
my scale will lean, at least a little, more to joy.