Spending the day with Kiki
Sweet lassie I miss ye
Too long since I kissed ye
I'm sorry we had tae part
I love you so much
Ye said at your last touch
With your hand held over my heart
And your hand still feels warm on my heart
When I'm lyin' alone in the dark.
A couple of weeks after meeting Grey Wolf on the side of the road on Salt Spring Island, BC, I said goodbye to my best friend of twenty years on the side of the road by the ferry dock. We both knew it was the last time we would hold each other, this time 'round and it was so hard to let go. How I still wish I could've stayed to see her all the way through. That was the September. She died Nov. 21st 1991...sixteen years ago today.
You only get one Best Friend for a lifetime...and, at five foot fuck-all, she was the Best.
We met at a nightclub in Toronto...at age sixteen, in 1972. I fell in love with her at first sight...in her jeans, pink Indian cotton shirt, suede vest, clogs, and wire-rimmed, rose-coloured glasses...long blonde hair, hazel eyes and wicked sense of humour...held the proper reverence for irreverence. We danced, drank cheap draft beer and totally ignored the boyfriends who had introduced us.
We both lived in Cabbagetown (just off Parliament St.) which was a rundown area of very cheap rent...as opposed to the very high-end snazziville it has become. These were the days when the Riverdale Zoo was still there...awful place, with eagles in cages next to rabbits in cages next to grizzly bears (yes, plural) in a cage about ten-by-ten. On garbage days I would go whistle under her window at 5am...and we would go a-hunting, accompanied by her faithful dog, Lucille. We came home with all kinds of treasures that other folk had decided to throw away. The best was a full, satin comforter, red with an embroidered golden dragon. It had been thrown out because of a rip, which was fixable...and dry-cleaning was still way cheaper than buying this new.
We had twenty loving years...if not physically together, intimately between the sheets of letters, constant. I pulled her to the left coast...and, in life's irony, bounced back east. Until her illness pulled me back...to a magical new door in my life...one that she was not supposed to walk through with me...but waited for me, once I stepped through.
I'll call her sister today sometime...she was thirteen when we met...and next year she'll be fifty...we'll have good laughs and talk about Kiki's upcoming dead-grannihood. All keeps moving...and my love for her keeps moving with it. Such is love...where sweetness and pain meet at the sword's point of everyday battle.
Too long since I kissed ye
I'm sorry we had tae part
I love you so much
Ye said at your last touch
With your hand held over my heart
And your hand still feels warm on my heart
When I'm lyin' alone in the dark.
A couple of weeks after meeting Grey Wolf on the side of the road on Salt Spring Island, BC, I said goodbye to my best friend of twenty years on the side of the road by the ferry dock. We both knew it was the last time we would hold each other, this time 'round and it was so hard to let go. How I still wish I could've stayed to see her all the way through. That was the September. She died Nov. 21st 1991...sixteen years ago today.
You only get one Best Friend for a lifetime...and, at five foot fuck-all, she was the Best.
We met at a nightclub in Toronto...at age sixteen, in 1972. I fell in love with her at first sight...in her jeans, pink Indian cotton shirt, suede vest, clogs, and wire-rimmed, rose-coloured glasses...long blonde hair, hazel eyes and wicked sense of humour...held the proper reverence for irreverence. We danced, drank cheap draft beer and totally ignored the boyfriends who had introduced us.
We both lived in Cabbagetown (just off Parliament St.) which was a rundown area of very cheap rent...as opposed to the very high-end snazziville it has become. These were the days when the Riverdale Zoo was still there...awful place, with eagles in cages next to rabbits in cages next to grizzly bears (yes, plural) in a cage about ten-by-ten. On garbage days I would go whistle under her window at 5am...and we would go a-hunting, accompanied by her faithful dog, Lucille. We came home with all kinds of treasures that other folk had decided to throw away. The best was a full, satin comforter, red with an embroidered golden dragon. It had been thrown out because of a rip, which was fixable...and dry-cleaning was still way cheaper than buying this new.
We had twenty loving years...if not physically together, intimately between the sheets of letters, constant. I pulled her to the left coast...and, in life's irony, bounced back east. Until her illness pulled me back...to a magical new door in my life...one that she was not supposed to walk through with me...but waited for me, once I stepped through.
I'll call her sister today sometime...she was thirteen when we met...and next year she'll be fifty...we'll have good laughs and talk about Kiki's upcoming dead-grannihood. All keeps moving...and my love for her keeps moving with it. Such is love...where sweetness and pain meet at the sword's point of everyday battle.