I think of a summer night when we,
vivid and voluble with promise,
sat out for hours under a ceiling of stars,
swinging our youthful legs in the breeze,
blind drunk with happy tomorrows.

Though only death can stop time dead,
time that evening slowed for a freeze-
frame moment, a limelight flash of self-recall,
which still revisits me when dreams
tug at memory’s sleeve.

I think of us then, so bold, so sure
that both were movers-and-shakers-to-be;
and I think of us now — you, past pain, gone in
somewhere beneath a timeless roof,
and I still under the stars.