Revisiting some old poems, seeing if I can "fix" them.

Evening.

This is the toughest time.
"How like winter has your absence been",
and all that. You know.

But- it is winter now.
It's rain, dark, trees shorn: 

menacing or beautiful, take your pick.

I think longingly of the shower-
hot water down my face,
my toes and fingers prune-like.
Prufrockian, I imagine, but remain.

There is a story I want to tell. Tell you.
The music teacher. 

Remember how I hated the piano classes?
Yes, yes. I know. I could have, should have.

So: the music teacher.

He sits on a bench

and has no idea where to go.
I don't either. 

Is this what God feels like

sometimes?

I have to catch an early train out tomorrow.
In the rain and cold, and lack of sun,
I am being a determined tourist-
you would rather be a traveller-
but I am a tourist;

I have the guides, the maps,
the internet:

this place can have no mysteries for me.
I know just where to get 

the perfect cup of coffee, 

the prettiest sunsets,

the best bargains, and how,

having fallen in love with the palace he built
a king, seven centuries ago, never emerged from it, but died there,
and I imagine his spirit, disintegrating, free at last,
settle with a sigh on the wine-red drapes.