Touch me in the morning

By Jules Watson

There is a certain delicate pale green phosphorescent light that hits the trees at seven o’clock in the morning in Riverside Park.

It is a gentle and somehow fragile light that is so overwhelming in its beauty that it can actually take your breath away.

Growing up on Riverside Drive is not like growing up anywhere else in the city.

There is a stillness and a grandeur and a curve and bend to the avenue that always made my young curious self want to wander along its cobblestoned path and get lost in reverie.

Years later as I peer into the empty mansion on the corner of 81st Street in the morning rain, I ponder the lives and loves that have lived and perished behind these splendid, now deserted walls…

Why won’t they whisper to me?

I think I hear them, but it’s the child in me dreaming, with a damp flushed cheek pressed into a pillowcase with faded rosebuds

As my soul mate and I wrap warm hands around each other’s waists and stroll to the river we find ourselves on our worn, crooked and slightly jagged bench

The one that is always waiting

Loyal and true

Even in the depths of a cold and lonely winter’s day

The one longing to eavesdrop on our secret words and promises

To spy on a kiss

The Spring clouds look like castles today
Oh look, there is a dragon I missed

The world has turned inside out

Where is it safe?

So much sorrow and blood

It’s as though mud has covered us in a heaving storm

Must we must we give in to the
tears that fall?

They come all the time with no notice at all

They come from fatigue and anger and sadness

That can stab like a knife

As we watch from the sidelines
this massacre, this madness

I ache for life to be gorgeous and serene like a lovers scene on a sunny day

Innocence reclaimed
Will we ever be the same?

I see myself in a flowered dress in a field, awaiting my lover

The daydream is interrupted

I query

Will one day the illness and division and isolation and strife become a fable?

Where again we are able
To love and to laugh
To gather and debate

Not hate

We’ve been told in the end we create our own fate

And destiny…

who winks as we pass

waiting to see if we have the moxie, the sass

the brains and the heart

To repair this broken world
And make a new start…

I hunger for joy and knowledge and days everlasting

For friendship
And family
And time to slow down

Give me back some years, I muse
Anyone listening, anyone around?

Nighttime and moonbeams can bring demons and regret

The morning is for peace

To make love
To reset

I believe in the dawn

I believe in the light

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light?

I believe in connections

I believe in humankindness

And upon reflection

Hope is my Bible

This can be our time
To dazzle
To soar

We must rise above

There is still so much more

To feel and discover, to believe in and to teach

With love in your heart,
No star is out of reach…

Other poems by Jules Watson have also appeared in the Rag: Coming Home, A Love Letter to the Upper West Side, and Hope Springs Eternal, A Love Letter to Central Park.