IN MY MEMORY

IN MY MEMORY

In my memory, the tarnished fragments of you linger,
Like some sad, sweet melody from a torchy nightclub singer.
The times we lived, the year you died, stretch across a burnt out field,
The times I stood my stubborn ground, the times you forced my soul to yield.

In my memory, the good times in a freeze frame, the bad all but abandoned,
A heart at once at peace with loss, but empty as a desert canyon.
Who says the dead leave and go anywhere once they leave our side?
You are a friend to the howling wind, you keep the prairie satisfied.
And though the years pass all too soon, like the fragments of a quarter moon,
They round up all my tears and lasso them to stillness,
Calm their jagged crystal edges, rescue them from willfulness.

In my memory, the decades spin into the cyclone,
Of friends I know will not return untouched unto this earthly home.
The time opens out in wide expanse to the cosmos and its hallowed dance.
Somehow the survivors lay their burden down and somehow carry on,
A little wiser, a little numb, from the place they’d once begun.
My memory the great sifter of the sands through which I’ve come.

It’s not the dead I sing for, but the living they have left behind,
Those who must make sense somehow of Fate’s great handiwork.
The search of a Sherlock for a clue to the Maker and his rhyme,
My memory is failing, in the labyrinth of His bread and holy wine.

In my memory, the gleaming torchlight of you lingers,
And for awhile you will remain, wrapped around my memory’s fingers.
Until we merge and then converge, soldiers of the dust,
And others they are left behind to bow their heads and ponder us.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2011
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED