Time is Liquid

 Watching the pleasure boats
drift on the acrylic gray
waters of Lake Union,
I talk for hours this day
with my friends, Don and Maury –
two long time musicians.
We inhale July clouds
and exhale memories
of forty years past
in Cincinnati.

We remember  the fire
breathing hallways of the brain
and the sunlight speaking
Sanskrit in the refrain
of traffic  on Calhoun Street
in waves through summer heat.
The Rosetti figures
of girls my friends knew
appear once again
in a fading hue.

Time is liquid
on this slow afternoon,
looking back on years
like a procession
of vanished moons.

We laugh at each other
and call ourselves old men
just trying to regain
our youthful oxygen
from an overheard  chord change
somehow new and strange.
And sometimes we still hear
ventilation systems
fill with the choiring
of guitar  anthems.

Time is liquid
on this slow afternoon,
looking back on years
like a procession
of vanished moons.