Please Don't Tell Me

It's not the here and now, now - or the here and now, then
It's waisting the past 40 years about all that could've been
If only I could send this poem across ripples travelling through time
One copy to me and another to you just in case, just in case...
 
Weakness embraced silence when I needed courage deep within
In the past it lead to regrets I cannot mend that never end
Yet hindsight has not helped me to see beyond my history
Past the lack of strength still hiding, still residing inside me
 
So please don't tell me you would have loved me
Had I only asked that day in study hall sitting with our friend
It's not that we would not've been infinitely  happy
It's knowing the past 40 years that coulda, woulda, should've been
 
 Always I am overwhelmed by the loveliness that is you
Your golden rainbow across blue painted heavens
Such perfection was a cage of bronze bars to a heart
Unworthy to touch such beauty except in secret dreams
 
If only I had told you when you looked into my eyes
When you asked me if a boy should tell a girl if he likes her
As if your arrow was aimed at any other heart but mine
But words could not find the sound to sync your harmony with rhyme
 
The day we met in math class when you sat next to me
The crush that crushed the heart of a thirteen year old
If only, if only, if only is a deafening echo louder than yesterday
If only saying "I'm sorry" was enough to color the sunrise of today
 
Then there were the other chances fate handed me
Talking by the campfire at Caroga lake under the midnight sky
and again at Sneaky Pete's in Toga-Springs 20 Summers past
Regrets I can't go back in time to change and say I love you Cathy