Poem: We Never Had This 

We never had this.
Catching rays of sunlight on a children's train, chugging along through an LA park.
Eucalyptus trees and hollyleaf cherry, and the smell of pine like the promise of a mountain
I hug my children to me as they laugh and ask about machines and leaves and hummingbirds
My answers leave out what is always on my mind
when I come this far north
Where you lived
Instead I tell them about seasons and the old gods, what ancient people once believed,
any tale to entertain them
things they will remember years from now
and say, dad, tell us about the fauns
the train story about the fauns
They will remember the train even when it has merged into that broad avenue of time I call memory
You never wanted this.
And had I the means to travel back there, up the road of time that only goes down
to learn what you did want, and deliver it,
I would be stranded from this moment
these children
my children
carried down another avenue without such things as children's trains and silly questions about machines
I'd be back on our train, sharing that last kiss,
the first kiss of a new beginning.
Lucky me they want to know about hummingbirds and trees and old gods
and not this old California dude who smells pine and thinks of you,
drifting further from the station
of our last disagreement.
We never had this.
Peace.
It is the cruel irony of the old gods that peace brings with it memories of passion and pain.
It startles me that I can look back up that road and see you still
And I wonder if you ever catch a train and see me looking back.
I am happier here than I was there
loved so completely by as yet incomplete beings
but the man I was, now and then, catches the scent of you
and howls .