Down the foggy ruins of time

Hockey season is back again and once more we have the pleasure of watching Pavel Datsyuk and the Detroit Red Wings. When I was in high school in Detroit, we didn't have a hockey team. But a group of us hockey fanatics would rent out an hour of ice time at the Detroit Skating Club, from 11:00pm to 12:00pm on Saturday nights. It was a badge of honor to be one of the 22 selected to play each Saturday night.

It was also date night. That too was a badge of honor, to bring your date to the arena to watch you play. Yes, those were some strange times. I worked myself up to be a regular of the 22 by skating circles for 2 hours every day after school at the State Fairgrounds arena. One of the other skaters each day was a girl named Sheila Young. She ended up winning a Gold Medal in the 1972 Olympics.

Now some forty years later, I don't skate anymore, I don't play hockey anymore, Saturday night is no longer date night for me, whether in a relationship or not. No, let me take that back. M and I used to go dancing at a club here in Phoenix on Saturday nights. The closest we ever were as a couple were those special moments on the dance floor, sometimes just locked in a deep passionate kiss, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves. No hockey game ever compared to those kisses, those dances, those date nights.

All of that is gone now. The skating, the hockey, the date nights, M. It seems that nothing ever stays the same. It changes for the better, it changes for the worse, it changes just for the sake of change. But one thing never changed in all of that. Every time there was the future. Every one of those skates, games, dances, passionate kisses was full of hope and giddy expectation of what would be coming next.

And what came next?

Writing about what was once and forever, my life.


Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.