Memory

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.