Along the Road of Life I Carry With Me Memories
ALONG THE ROAD OF LIFE I CARRY WITH ME MEMORIES
Recollected childhood trips seem an intensely hot affair.
We took a bus, tight-filled with sweaty people’s feet
For hours; but then at the end, there was air.
And gone were the constriction and glaring heat -
In the tranquil cool shade of the springtime wood.
There were spreading red campions and more -
In places where a little sun shimmered and could
Make yellow pools on the woodland floor.
And everywhere the fairy bluebells all
Nodding in crowds blue and thronging.
In life I carry with me and oft recall
That day, the happiness, the feeling of belonging.
I picked armfuls hoping to preserve their beauty till later,
Wrapping them in wet cloth in a water-pail
To survive the torrid heat of the bus-incinerator,
Unaware that their happy lives I would thus curtail.
An intensely-lived child-experience does not diminish,
But telescopes into a longer event, perhaps with fairies,
Sometimes without any definite finish.
Tiny spaces can morph into prairies.
Maybe the bluebells were just there in some garden to find ,
But I did see them somewhere, and I really made the trip,
I really smelled them. They were not just a dream in my mind :
And for years after, I wanted to relive their friendship.
But trying to recapture childhood memory
Is like trying to preserve beauty a-flowering
By picking it for a collection in a repository.
Its beauty is gone with the garnering.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Written for Paula Swanson's Contest "I Carry With Me"
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