Outside the Palace of Fine Arts
the brassy bedouin gifted
this uneasy teen
her guitar.
And as
he slipped beneath
the sassy spell of
crazed voodoo spirits,
wicked fingers blazed
electric on its strings,
and wailed alongside the waif's bluesy
this-is-the-last-song-I-will-ever-sing voice.
A mic in one hand and swigs of
Southern Comfort from her other,
she would dub him "Raoul",
an unsung
discovery,
sober no longer
in the drunken
merriment
of the spring moment
that would never
leave him.
Weeks passed.
Time stopped again
as music channeled
from some
other distant life took hold,
and ephemeral summer
magic howled
its symphony,
then took sudden flight as a thief
in the stolen
night
never to return.
Sadly, Janis soon passed as well.
The young man grew older,
accomplished
many other things
in his life,
until the last sepia'd memory
of Raoul faded
to white.
One day a lost friend,
a godchild unseen
in decades,
passed as a ghost
through his thoughts.
As if by whim, he typed random numbers
into the address bar.
Her profile splashed
on the screen.
He was startled,
delighted.
It was magic!
She'd moved across a continent
and an ocean,
eight time zones away,
and yet here she was
before him.
Conversations followed.
And he smiled.
Raoul had never left.
