Apples Of Gold - RicPerrott.com

When we were young we swore the love between us was forever
The smiles we shared, the passion we felt was ours for all our time
Those times we lay beneath the sprawling Oak in your front yard
I remember so well, for it was there that I was yours and you were mine

Do you recall the night we pledged our hearts and linked our souls?
Under that tree we shared more than our bodies, more than we two
In the morning I took the wrinkled purple ribbon from your hair
Upon the branch I tied it where it would stay as we grew old

The years passed by and as time went on our love grew like that tree
As deep and wide as the branches of that Oak spread ?ecross the yard
Every morning I'd see that ribbon and it would always make me smile
Because every day meant so much more to know that you loved me

On the fateful day that will never leave the caverns of my mind
You kissed me goodbye and held me just a little longer before you left
I wonder at nights if you could have known, somehow, that it was calling
That morning when I last saw you smile lives forever behind my eyes.

Now as I sit here with only fading memories of a love gone by
There's not a moment in which I don't miss the warmth of your touch, your smile.
Every so often I look out the window of our empty, lonely house
It's when the wind catches a weather beaten ribbon that I cry.

Originally envisioned as a song, once I began writing it I felt that it would work better as a poem. I tried to take the 5 stanzas and have them relate to a particular period of the narrator's life, in that the first 2 were looking forward, the middle one speaking from the center of life, and the last 2 speaking from the present, 1 looking back, and 1 speaking from today.

It's a sad one, I realize that, but it accurately conveys what I was feeling that particular day. I remember writing this one in the bedroom of a girl I was dating back in 1987 or so; she wasn't there for whatever reason, and I had some time to kill, so I started working on this one. I spent some time trying to shoehorn the verses into a lyrical structure that could be more easily sung, but gave up shortly thereafter and decided to go ahead full bore and write it poetically instead. Personally, I think it works much better this way, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. Some people have told me that the ending hits them pretty hard, as they weren't expecting that sort of finish; I can understand that, but that's what was real to me at the time. I felt that this was the truth about this person's life, so I wrote the truth; I hope you can appreciate the work and the emotion that it carries.