A new night in spring…
when every spring night feels new,
even as we move toward summer, even when spring is near its end.
The pool glows eerily on spring nights, or maybe it’s just the moon on the verge of being full.
And Blue.
It’s a little too early for a tender song called ‘Nightswimming’ – that comes later, when we’re nearer to September. For now, another R.E.M. beauty – ‘At My Most Beautiful’ which almost matches the tenderness of ‘Nightswimming’.
I’ve found a way to make you
I’ve found a way
A way to make you smile
Spring nights somehow manage to be romantic, no matter if it’s raining or clear, windy or still – and love is always right when the moon and the night conspire to create beauty. It’s there in the warm water, in the perfume of lily-of-the-valley riding on the breeze, in the clouds moving over and behind the moon. The pool is almost like the color of a jade vine bloom dangling in the night of some forest in the Philippines.
I read bad poetry
Into your machine
I save your messages
Just to hear your voice
You always listen carefully
To awkward rhymes
You always say your name
Like I wouldn’t know it’s you
At your most beautiful
Once upon a Boston autumn, I listened to this song right around the time I started dating a sweet boy. We would last for almost two years, and I’d move halfway across the country for him, only to come back heartbroken and alone before we had the chance to share another spring together. We were so young, so hopeful, so unrocked by the world at that point. Still, we weren’t meant to be, and we couldn’t keep it together. He was brave enough to say so; I was brave enough to accept it without a brutal fight. This song brings me back to our beginning – a little slice of happiness and heaven.
I’ve found a way to make you
I’ve found a way
A way to make you smile
I remember sitting on the bed in my Boston place as the sun came in through the bay window. Fall was at hand, but it held on to the warmth of summer, the way cities sometimes hold that season’s heat well into October. Suzie was visiting and we sat on the bed catching up. Nervous to tell her about him, the way I would always be when introducing my boyfriends to her, my giddiness overrode the nerves and I remember smiling like a fool the entire time. The first inklings of love are unmistakable, and so adorably fun; I just wanted to share the feeling, to shout it and declare it and let the whole world know. It was easy to fall in love then, at least for me; my friends were much wiser – safer, too – but I didn’t care. Recklessly, ruinously, ridiculously, I would fall over and over and over again. And it was always worth it – if only for a season or two.
At my most beautiful
I count your eyelashes secretly
With every one, whisper, “I love you”
I let you sleep
I know your closed eye watching me
Listening
I thought I saw a smile
Lately I’ve been looking at long-ago romances and revisioning the hurt I felt at the end of any number of relationships. The endings usually left me sad and bereft, and in sadness there was bitterness. That’s not how I want to remember those love affairs, and so I’m shifting my view of them, choosing instead to remember how wonderful they were in their respective sections of my life. Hence the sweet song of this post, and the revelations – literal and metaphorical – of now and then.
I’ve found a way to make you
I’ve found a way
A way to make you smile
