The gift of memory offers the opportunity to relive moments of wonder. It provides us with a permanent sense of experience, feelings, both emotional and sensory. I have, as you most likely do, a closet full, an attic full, a heart full of memories. Memories of that which I can no longer touch or see or hear or taste or smell and yet, I can – simply by allowing myself to travel back through the days, the weeks, the years – back through remembering to times too precious to forget.
This poem is dedicated to four of my grandchildren: Rebecca, Corinda, Valerie, and Natalia. I now have seven amazing grandchildren but “that one day” – almost thirty years ago – I had four, and the memory they gifted me with is stored safely in my heart and now, indulgently, on the page.
That One Day
They drink sunlight
with their eyes
it bubbles back brighter airborne
laves the skin of leaves flowers turns
the wind’s whine to laughter…
beneath a canopy of willow
my summer soldiers hide
plotting ways to outwit
butterflies endeavoring to ride
the long sleek back of this one
summer day
all the way to twilight…
they skitter between tangled
branches uncover newts coiled
like question marks between
damp covers of rocks collect
then discard with equal ease bouquets
of weeds clasp
with a gentleness that leaves
unscathed a bright bug-eyed Cicada dart
like small brown beetles in
and out of shadow across the raucous green
of summer lawns as though born this day
children of the morning sunlight air
so pure it settles on the skin like dew these four
promises the future will keep make summer new
a quilt of color harmony of chirps tweets buzzes
an embrace of arms of air sunlight scent
seeds yet to be born taste of streams
still frozen on distant mountains…
this day this summer day is plump perfect
as a plum juicy sweet shifting
beneath the insistence of seconds towards
sunset low hanging light fades on the horizon
dims like heavy eyes fighting sleep clouds
edge in taking the sky to gloom thunder
rumbles in the distance like the fading hooves
of charging steeds my eyes are weary wide
with the wonder I have seen innocence
of flowers joy of birds
in flight the unimaginable delight discovered
in a caterpillar’s clumsy crawl of all
the summer days I have ever known this one
alone I will shine
with the cloth of memory to the luster
of polished stone…
