Soap Bubbles from an Earlier Age

Is there a spot on this long concrete walk
that doesn’t cling to some memory
of a momentary touch?
In this whole city, that seems to almost
swirl up with the leaves,
is there one place where I don’t think
of a distant lover's breathing?

Is that love, what was gone so long ago,
and never really seemed to exist at all,
except that one day when eyes looked inside
and bodies disappeared?

But still the scent is upon me, of what
I did not know and could not own,
I’ve kept that brief murmur of need beside me
through so many seasons of birth and death,
as if the expression was worth more than the thing itself.

Is there someone holding this on the other side?
Was there ever someone there?
Or was it just the sudden glare of my own reflected love
that I keep searching for
in the sewers and shafts—the thing that vanished
in the dimmest light,
that never was but now is all there is.