Tracing mason’s mortar courses down the stairway to the stone wall cellar
Taste the air, tastes like an old harp or a whistle, smells like dust in the rain
Light can get in the way in a place like this, what you miss ain’t gray walls, brown floors, shadow corners
Close your eyes
Close your eyes

In nineteen seventy-two, sixteen years old, I told you a story a hundred times or more
I don’t remember ever running from the doorway down the staircase, but I do remember the dirt on the floor
It was cool and it was hard and it was smooth like wet leather on a steel toe boot
And I pulled you to the ground and with just the sound of your breath in the dark I still found you
Close your eyes
Close your eyes

I once was a wild child, violent at night, dark and silent in the light of the day
I cried to the lies of traitors. Why’d they say it if they hate me? Why’d they even look my way?
But you looked at me so hard it hurt. Weren’t you lost in gossip and the daily dirt?
Weren’t you hurting to lay it on me? Did you not know any better? Did you ignore the things you heard?
You closed your eyes
Close your eyes.

But now we stand here blind, the light is just words from the unenlightened they say, “Don’t you see what we see”
Alone in the dark of the night, hark the higher senses, heart beat tenses, spending body heat
Oh you and me, you and me, oh you and me
Smell that pretty paralyzing summer cellar. Dare to rise above the heat

Tracing mason’s mortar courses down the stairway to the stone wall cellar

©2006 Nicholas Hohman