The Lonesome Goatherd

I heard an amazing piece of music today, and I wanted to share it with you. But...
I couldn't. So I had to share it with someone else,
someone else who I knew didn't understand it as soon as this person said, "Yeah, that's kinda cool".
I wanted to pick up the phone
and tell you about a poem that I read -a poem that made melancholy feel tangible,
a poem that made darkness feel bright, a poem that made rain taste like wine-
but I couldn't.
So I tried to share it with other people, all of whom said, "I'll look it up later."
Of course, I knew they wouldn't.

Because how am I supposed to explain that a part of that tangible melancholy and a part of that bright darkness will always be laced into every faintly glimmering brainthread that you tread so heavily across?

How will those pixilated pictures of you ever stop wringing out my lungs unless I forget what you look like,
forget that childish tree-climbing somehow made me grow up faster,
forget that you never even heard me play the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata,
forget there ever was a lonesome goatherd, strumming guitar strings for me on front steps,

who taught me how to say what I needed to say,
even though it nearly killed me.