Memories Are

By John I. Blair

My memories seem a pool of dreams
Riffled by the flow of years
And transmigration of my cells.

As the old ones drifted past recruits
They whispered each to each,
But the details lost their clarity,
Refracted by my wishes and my fears.

Now my neurons are a different lot
Than those that simmered in my youth;
So why surprise if, asked of something
Fifty cycles of the sun ago,
I find I haven’t anything to share
Unless I garnered scars or stars,
Tales of joy or woe
I tell incessantly,
So often that my fictions
Have become the fact.

But sometimes scents
Or sounds or tastes
Snatch back memories I thought
Had washed away forever.

The smell of almonds –
I touch my mother’s skin.

Someone’s puffing on a pipe
And my father smiles beside me.

I eat a plate of curried lamb;
My wife of forty springs
Is young and courting me again,
And courting me again.

©2007 John I. Blair