Patina

When I was a young man full of high hopes, and piss and vinegar, and all the other things that make a young man want to see the world and maybe even conquer a piece of it, I used to daydream about walking on a moonlit beach somewhere in the South Pacific with a beautiful Polynesian woman on my arm and an umbrella drink in my hand.

Now that I walk slowly and a little crooked like an old dog and have seen and heard far too many terrible things to have much of a wanderlust left in me, I still daydream about places. But not so much about people.

In my favorite daydream I'm sitting on the front porch of a log cabin somewhere deep within a wooded hollow on a starlit summer evening. I am not alone but with someone I care about, not someone I desire. We watch the sunset, feel the warm breeze, smell the honeysuckle, listen to a whippoorwill and sip our coffee.