I remember it in high key tones
of blue and gray.
Warm wind threw rain at the windshield
like scattered seed,
And it pounded on the roof, for hours,
while we played cards
and spied with little eyes
on the shapes we could make out
through the fog.

The glass divided the worlds.
We hoarded the color and the heat,
while the sky cried itself to sleep
over the curling winter bay.

There wasn't much to go round,
if you exclude cheap tea bags
and the overwhelming adventure
a rainy carpark provides
to an active mind.

That was the day the old bus flooded
and I felt bad, sitting in the camping bed,
while you fought the sandstorm, to get us going.
But my worries evaporated
when I saw that grin,
as you hauled yourself in
and wrung yourself dry,
waiting for the heater to kick in.

There was always an optimism
when you turned that dial,
because the countdown to toasty hands had begun.
You could hear the fan spinning,
so you knew something was going on
and it couldn't take too long to warm up.

I had a few days, since,
that reminded me of that one,
but there was never going to be another just like it.
I've relived it a few times
in ways where I was you,
and even a few times where we both were,
but I'm still not satisfied about how few.

You know when you take a really bad photo
and you kind of hate it,
but then years later,
you look at it
and it's somehow achieved perfection?
I've got one like that
of your old MG.
And the words 'Harvest Gold'
immediately come to mind
whenever I see it.

I remember,
it was parked outside your flat,
back in the days
when you could park outside your own place,
before there were more cars than people.

I remember,
I sat in those old man chairs
at the end of the hallway
and looked out at the street
with my big bro,
laughing at the chairs,
but secretly recording the moment in my mind,
so I could play it back,
twenty-something years later,
at 3am,
when I couldn't sleep,
because I'd been too lazy in the morning
and slept through to lunch time.

Yeah, there were some moments
I wish I had on film,
but mainly, back then, time didn't move,
so it never seemed important.
We would just waste frame after frame
on silly stuff
for the sake of it,
thinking we were never going to actually care
about the pictures.

I remember so many things in technicolor, now.
But most of the sound recordings got damaged
in the storms and the fires we had along the way,
and those that survived
are in some old format
which I can't play back.
So it's all silent moments, now.
But they feel complete,
stored where they belong
and filed in no kind of order.

But I remember.