Fragments
of Days
We were out driving
in Bob's old chevy somewhere west of Meyersville.
I punched at buttons
trying to find some music on the radio.
It was Thanksgiving day as I recall and everything was closed.
We passed a house with windows lit
on a scene like a Rockwell painting
and I felt like going home.
Sheri was a tough girl.
She worked in this rock club down on Market street.
She was so unlike me it wasn't funny.
We both walked to different beats.
One cold night I met her downtown. We walked a while in the park.
I asked her to dinner.
I sprung for a pizza.
She unlocked the club
and we made love in one of the backrooms all night long.
And if I could touch those days
they'd feel like Sheri's leather jacket
cold to the touch against December's wind.
The heat of her body drawing close to mine
in an inocent time when I was just a kid
and a tough girl's tenderness
filled my head with ideas
about the way that love should feel.
When I met Paul
he was a guitar playing needle with a mop of blonde hair.
We hoofed the beach towns of Jersey all that summer
looking for a gig.
We built a small empire
on the third floor of a music store.
Selling walls of sound
to the obscure and the renoun.
and if I could touch those days
they'd feel like sand between my toes
walking down the beach with my best friend.
Dreaming our rock dreams
in a time when anything seemed possible.
Time has it's way.
And passion loses out to practicality.
Try as we may
to make our dreams fit in to our reality.
defining moments in our lives are only fragments of ordinary days.
They pass us by like so many green signs out on the interstate.
And if I could touch them
they'd feel like motorcycle grips in my hands
wind in my face...
in a race...
with the moon.
Flying my fast machine across the midnight line
and into yet another.
Bob Ayres, March 21, 1998
