L'Air du Temps

 

 

  

  

Petal-frail, revenant,
echoes of bygone times and places
shadows, flashbacks,
storylines not ours revived,
trailing atmospheres
of honeysuckle love and grief,
the muse of something lost and longed for
chased down a corridor of mirrors,
carriage wheels turning,
hidebound travelling to Avalon,
impartial streets glimpsed
in patent twilight, the cabby charmed
by dancing love-light in the eye,
rapt reunions and nights
of molten ardour, feather-bedded,
walking on Eden's air
in clandestine groves,
waltzing to inner melodies
under canopies of blossom,
nuptial-white. Perfect irony!
Spectral fountains, silken water
and the benevolent ether
that promised forever
and must be for ever
though long lost and gone,
the bottle stoppered, done!

 How does it then,
the apparition of that scent,
carry on a zephyr's breath
haunting the nostrils of the mind
invading the sinuses
as piquantly and potently
as Proust's bitten madeleine cake?

Why the craving now
for what is ephemeral
and merely subliminal
a sensation sketched in air
inspired, conjured, distilled
by a Parisian alchemist
from summer's scented ash?

 

                   

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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