I was an impossibly romantic 16-year-old (wishing I were going on 30) in boarding school, already tragically mourning lost loves when I discovered Leonard Cohen, whose photograph I had plastered to the dorm room ceiling above my bed. I still love his poem "Travel," and hear its lines in my head. "Loving you, flesh to flesh to flesh, I often thought of travelling penniless to some mud throne Where a master might instruct me how to plot My life away from pain, to love alone In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake. Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost Enough to lose a way I had to take … Now I know why many men have stopped and wept Halfway between the loves they leave and seek, And wondered if travel leads them anywhere – Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek, The windy sky’s a locket for your hair."

Then, of course, I was wishing someone was feeling that about me. Now I am old enough to have experienced the words from both sides. I am also happy to say that Leonard is still with us, still a hopeless romantic and I still have his picture (though no longer on my ceiling). Right now, I have James Taylor’s new version of Cohen’s "Suzanne" in the CD player in my car (I so love what Taylor does with those lyrics – just listen to him sing the word "China" as in tea – he’s just amazing) and now that I’ve gotten Cohen’s "Selected Poems" off my shelf to answer this post, I am walking down memory lane: Ah, "the mortal ring of flesh on flesh in dark."