In Memory Of Robert Thompson

1: Night

One by one 

Lights flicker and snuff out

The city is shutting down

A street organ is playing

Spinning the music of long ago

Songs of desire and loss

Songs of betrayal

Wine-soaked singing

Molasses the sounds

Drifting in the jasmine scented night

2:  A Dream

Come to me shadow and starlight

Come for one unmeasured moment

I want

Flesh to flesh

Interlaced

Your stubbled salt cheek

 3:  Salonika

They were two  

And holding hands

Before, I had known them as one and one

The girl's hair yellow like ripened lemons

Fell in sharp angles around her face

Her man laughed a confident laugh

He enjoyed laughter

I understood
Too late Too close to twilight

After the ravages took hold

I took stock

We wandered leisurely on the promenade

Heading westward toward the tower

It was a prison once

Its captives, who were they?

Bruised souls with forgotten names

Their screaming silenced now

and ashes, ashes

returning southward to a home lost

ashes moving through space

dispersing over the beloved hills

over the familiar sea

she carried her numbers, bright blue

4: Time

We sailed into the small hours

The two-masted caique was brightly lit

Its crew calling for passengers

He was first on the gangplank

And it was a floating bar we walked into

No particular time chuckled the waitress

We close when we run out of customers

Heineken with a light misting of seawater 
He said

This drink has a pleasing taste,
Produced by hugging

Hugging?

The gunwale with one hand

A mug of beer with the other

We swung by our table for refills    

As the boat rocked

As the breeze picked up

Our careless chatter

The broken clock

We are sailing still