'a Stubborn Memory
I havn't seen my childhood crush
for sixty years, and memory is faithless,
for I loved her at the age of eight,
and lost her at sixteen; those two events
are silent sentinals presiding
over yin and yang of one sweet paradise
of hope a lesser Milton could have seized,
forsaking angels for Joanne.
But then she never would have owned
my consciousness, and though she sent it
spinning through the cosmos
on that final summer night,
she lacked the strength to wipe away
the gift of her eight years before,
confessing in our homeroom
that she knew I had been watching.
And does she know, I watch her still,
soft curls a sacrament for me
that dusty years may not defile?
Yet I still smile; the cosmos, too,
is in another place, and time and space
defy all rules of memory
and sweet regret.
~
Copyright © Robert Ludden | Year Posted 2012
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