Ghosts of Christmas Past

We stood at the edge of midnight

all standstill and not quite caress,

steepled in truncated desire

in that winter resonance

      of Austrian hush

just before the church bells rang.

Nineteen and twenty-one -- 

children, really,

though we imagined ourselves

agelessly mature

in our conversations of 
Neitzsche's Will to Power

and the archetypes of Carl Jung.

Now you still drink too much,

I still sing lonely love songs

into a different pitch-dark night.

Do you remember, too,

that long-ago, snow-covered escapade?

The way our breath billowed before us?

My heart-stopping dance,

sliding backward

into black-ice streets?