Someone in My Memories
By James G. Piatt
I watch helplessly as memories, like dim shadows
fade in my mind. They are but tiny echoes of black
and yellow butterfly wings fluttering in the breeze,
like an old light bulb in its last struggle for
brightness, or the final interplay between silence
and noise. In the utter and dark emptiness of that
moment, the rational exists within the absurd… and
I know it is beyond my power to recreate the memories again.
I feel a melancholy coming over me, like the
outgoing tide on a lonely isolated beach. As
memories pass me by on their way to being
obliterated, and the moment of wonder vanishes.
Beyond the darkening magenta horizon, past the last
light of the sun, beyond the lost memories,
thoughts, and desires, even the color of darkness, I
can hear an echo of anguish in the brusque winds
that curl around the ragged edges of my being.
I am halfway into the throngs of despair, when a
sweet voice calls to me leading me to a place where
nothing exists, except memories of the past. I see a
crooked sidewalk, leading to my old house, sided by
cedars seeming to pray, and a voice carries me
inside to bowls of red apples, and black figs wafting
delicious fragrances into the gentle space that
surround an old pine table.
In the glow of the moment, I see a vision of a
beautiful elderly lady wearing an apron. She seems
to have been waiting for this soft hour to come
again, for a long time, and as her image becomes
clearer, I recognize her, and I am filled with
sunshine.
James, a retired professor and octogenarian, is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee. He has had four collections of poetry; Solace Between the Lines, Light, Ancient Rhythms, and The Silent Pond, and over 1500 poems published worldwide. He earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO, and his doctorate from BYU. He lives with his wife Sandy, a pup named Scout, and an elderly cat named Barny, in the foothills of Santa Ynez, California, somewhere between mountains and ocean.
