You are a street festival inside my heart
from every road-side stop you ever made,
at the biggest honky tonk in Houston,
where you carried your bass guitar somewhere in the vicinity
of bars in pre-casino Shreveport where music played at the Louisiana Hayride all night,
and sometimes inside cyclone cages to protect the band
from breaking glass,
or in the rumble seat of a runaway bus
to witness the longest piss in the world.
I listened to your stories drinking Merlot,
waiting for you to stop talking long enough
to kiss your German-American-Indian
Bayou lips and double-lick mine.
You are a CD on my car radio
playing Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.
I'm wearing shades,
got my party face on, it's Friday and
soon we'll be riding
near Mission San Juan Bautista
just past La Carpa, tent of the farmworker.
You are a crystal ball
that catches my love
in colors like lilac, rose, buttercup, cream,
and because I know this is my last love,
and because I know how love can be tossed
into the gravel pit of time,
every moment I'm with you I celebrate
this now, now as long as I can hold on to it.
