Wow! Nice poem, Dana. I like that phrase "impudent breeze".
You have inspired me to make my own humble offering on the subject of memory.
Memory
I drive up toward Glade Mountain at dusk.
Below me the Dolores River keeps
calling my name, reminding me
of past sorrows.
A sudden patch of ice on a switch back
recalls me to the present –
tires skittering perilously close
to a 1,000 foot drop off
a free fall of memory
that I must stave off by being PRESENT.
Oh, what is time, anyway?
A construct made by some physicist
that has no meaning to me.
I am always late for my own life –
if I show up at all.
The setting sun blinds me
and I shade my eyes to stare
at the distant mountain ranges –
There’s Lone Cone, those are the Abajos,
that’s the Wasatch range
and I almost lose the road again.
Memory is such a heavy weight.
I wish I could have mine erased,
but I got the present erased instead.
Be in the NOW!
A mountain lion dances out of the woods,
stops for a split second, fixes my eye
with its own cat’s green stare,
then it is gone.
I reach the Glade and build a fire of juniper
just as the darkness sets in.
I want to stay here forever.
Just me and the fire, and the lion, and the cliffs.
It comes to me then that I must make peace
with my memory –
accepting both present and past.
I drive home in the dark
only getting lost once.
Last edited by marichiko; 12-07-2006 at 12:39 AM.
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