For Bar

I’ll miss Bar for the rest of my life.

Set the Bar High

It’s a place for coffee and cigarettes

It’s a place where cats walk on dinner sets

Where the kettle boils and the mugs are found

Where the laughter’s long and the words profound

Where we long for then and we wish for now

To be sweet and giddy, to be ours somehow.

Children grown and gone, husbands plump and here

Days of thinking now, and we shed a tear

For what’s gone before, what we feel we’ve lost

For the life we’ve had and the hidden cost.

Then we talk of children, laughter, hope

And we know that through it all we cope

With some cigarettes and a coffee pot

Twenty silk, emotion, such a lot

Of this and that and nothing much

But everything in turn will touch

Our hearts and make them sing again

Ignite the joy, dumb down the pain

The Bar is set and it is high

Not low – a mediocre try

High up, so we can touch the sun

And feel its heat, to know we won

The race in life, we beat the rest,

The ones who lived with second best.

This place of ash and coffee stains

This place where love and hope remain

Intact, is where I come to see

The woman who sees all in me

The Bar is high, she sets it so,

A woman I’m so glad to know

I met her in soft focus days

When babies ruled, a sunny haze

A time when time seemed limitless

Our lives so neat then in a mess

Our battles, triumphs, questions shared

Our paths examined and compared

And here we are, and here is Bar,

Spurring me on.  My avatar.