Some Small Consolation (Poetry)

For D.F.

That dream I had of you just a few nights ago
it seemed so real
and you looked the same as you did way back then
though forty years have scurried by since when
we were last in touch
but I guess that’s logical — for how
would I know what you look like now?

It seemed nothing in my dream
had changed at all —
we were young and passionate —
in love with life as much as we
were with each other
and likely we thought (as no doubt many lovers do)
those feelings would last forever

It’s true to say that something woke in me
from where it had slumbered for so long
it was a happy dream and hopeful, too —
proof I once believed in me & you
and it occurs to me to wonder
how you remember us — that’s if you ever do
and have (even the odd time) those retro dreams
that leave you with a fleeting sense of something precious
                                                                                lost...
then recalled like some small but bitter-sweet
consolation