Echoes of the Boxer

[lofro]

"Echoes of the Boxer"

Things echo;
They happen and then,
like a shout in a valley,
they happen again, and again.
Echoes couldn't care less
about how long ago they happened,
how different you are,
how far you have moved on.
On some dark January morning,
you will hear it,
and it will be just the same.

Art Garfunkel in the back of my mind:
Li la li, softly, li la li.
But it's not the song I'm hearing;
it's the first time again,
seventeen and in love,
a dance to a song that said nothing
of high school romances.
I never heard the words;
my concern was the smell of her hair,
the touch of her skin.
Yet The Boxer echoes,
that chant whisping its way into memory,
a mantra, a memory, a remembrance.

My mind knows I should be asleep,
despite my body's protests;
My mind knows that night is years apart,
although the memory differs.
I am older, and wiser, and happier,
and yet in memory,
I sometimes forget.

Three years ago we dance, li la li;
Tonight I shiver on the bed, li la li.
After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same;
Despite my imagined changes, I am more or less the same.

-1/20/2007, 5:12 AM