Two miles south of Mendocino
Harbour bell upon the breeze
Curled like dry beseeching hands
There comes a gust of leaves
Poplar gives a shiver
Casts its gold coins to wind
The setting moon is like a fingernail
Hanging pale and thin
The sun is red behind the eastern hills
He can see the morning glow
Red as winter cardinals
Writing haiku in the snow
He shrugs on his shirt, he lights a fire
He begins another day
His heart and love fly eastward
Three thousand miles away
He keeps a picture of a little girl
In a faded Huntsville shirt
Mid-stride in her baggy pants
Her knees stained with gra** and dirt
She's turning by a haystack
Hair bleached by wind and sun
Looking backwards at a scruffy dog
She's laughing as she runs
He holds that faded photo
Of that happy skinny child
He smiles at it and thinks about her
Running free and wild
Through distant sunlit fields of wonder
Flitting fast and far
Bright and busy as a firefly
With a tadpole in a jar
So it was some twenty years ago
As winter turned to spring
That child grown to a woman now
Stood gazing at a ring
Her golden hair fell forward
As she held it to her breast
She changed his life forever
As she quietly said ‘yes'
Well the sea rolls in from China
Breaks against the distant head
That cracked and faded photo
Is still beside him on the bed
They will have no child to call their own
But to him it's all the same
He will love the woman that she is
And the child that she remains