Balm

like a black, thin dress slowly floating down
so envelops darkness the palm tree;
success, like a lying caress
melts and frees the soul
of images of distasteful homes;
more than places or statues,
the universe is inherited by the
caprice of fleeting hopes,
streams with trees that gently roll;
hidden underneath it all,
treasure from before the fall,
a flute from which sounds the call to awe;
peace extends like a handshake
that, in memory, none can break;
I did once wish you tarried so,
that you could stay, remain
and let our hearts burn,
lest everything you had told us
just became this hazy dream;
lest the paintbrush of physical laws
would diffuse and dissolve all
that we had built in vain, for good;
I did wish I could be a child again
and erase all my past mistakes,
the baggage of time that is not really mine
and instead mine all that is forgot;
I remember now -- way out of the city
you baptised someone in a stream
and however much that group and their silly views
we are now at comfort to reprobate, yet they
still appear like an innocent dream
compared to all the highly regarded filth
spewed out by online news streams;
I remember again -- a flower, the only
friend in a garden made foreign by hands
busy rewriting the story of robbed lands
a city, with a tall gothic church standing witness
to a long overdue visit after more then twenty years;
or at the edge of England, walking among
Victorian houses that looked like they had piled up
while reaching for the peace of the crowning hills;
we've walked far since then,
and maybe it's just that,
jumping from age to age,
I have to admit I've aged;
if I'd be at pains to retrace
our steps and our missteps,
let me ask for strength
to find the old anew
and embrace the new of worth 
as if they were an old friend