Things

 

Lately I’m struggling

To recollect

Things

 

And when I do

They’re things from long ago

Not the near things that slip away

 

Unexpectedly I remembered

Running to my father up an incline

I was six “Daddy,” I yelled

 

That was odd

For I never saw him again

Recalled fresh as if just now

 

Meanwhile ‘just now’

Continues to elude me

The past apparently more memorable

 

Time and again snatches of it

Intrude on my elusive mundane present

And I am transported…I remember

 

Sandburg after a flamenco performance

White mane dancing among the dancers

My friend among them as I waited

 

My second son five floors up

At a NY Hospital window held high

While I below introduce the infant to his brother

 

Pinpricks and triggers

Animate my present with my past

And I in the haze of now enjoy the clarity of then

 

9/13-9/16/09

Copyright 2009 by Maurice Leiter.

Posted with permission.