Years Cannot Erase Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

I see you still, just standing,
soft shoulders, slightly drooped.
It was a German train of punctuality,
a trait one did expect but not that day.
A little longer was not in the cards.

Although prepared to take the awkwardness
of a departure from the comfy present
into a future of wholly unknoweable dimension,
no tears were visible or felt, not yet.
And not a tad of melancholy seen.

As doors clanged shut, a whistle urges
when, like a gesture, no an apparition,
a ray of sunshine, just a single one
had overcome the glassy dome and settled
upon your face, where sadness now resided.

Angelic features, bathed in golden orange glow,
have stayed with me for forty years and more.
And when we met again your presence was the same,
well-age regret hung in the air like stale lavender.
It left us suddenly and vowed not to return.
Unspoken promises remain, though no farewells.