You trail me…
with stealth
in patterns of eerie silence
every now and then
regurgitating
a moment
I thought had been lost to time.
You, the phantom of my memory.
Never lagging
too far.
Never slipping
back
to the time of my birth
to illuminate morsels of the past
like you do those of yesterday.
Instead
those days
those coveted moments
feel dead.
Sometimes
they resurrect themselves
raw and real, engulfing me
pulling me
back
in all five senses
to the good, the bad, and the oh so
(I wish I could not remember)
ugly.
Otherwise, it’s mostly darkness, interspersed with the spark of a distant memory
and the feeling of you
just behind
trailing with your hefty weight
of times before.
Yet so close, and agile
as if fearing to let me see
the time-string unpunctuated.
And so,
so much seems lost.
And I’m left here now
wondering
which of these thoughts
moments
events
times
of today, now, will become
invisible
to my future self.
So much, I’m not fussed by.
“It’s the juice of today”, I tell myself
“For the body of tomorrow”
“That will mean more
to me then”…
But then
the crush…
I don’t want to lose these moments
with them.
My beautiful, sweet, cherubs.
I don’t want to forget.
To let
them slip
away
behind the phantom’s wake.
Tell me that this hug
as she wakes from sleep
and folds her arms around me
melts onto me
with her face buried into the nape of my neck
tell me
I won’t forget.
Tell me that this whisper
as he falls asleep
that he loves me
(and as his hand falls softly across my face)
consciousness gone
his dream-self now bounding through summer meadows
toward that single tree on a hill, out Overdale Road.
Tell me that this moment will not
be forgotten
left to fall
into the dark divide
between
your distance from me now
and my birth.
Or the softness of their frames as I carry them to bed
and lay their heads
on puffed-up pillows.
Tell me I will remember these things
tomorrow.
Why will you not trail further?
Retreat
to meet
my beginning.
Let me have what is mine
between then and now
leave them to me!
I don’t want to loose these precious moments of today
to you
the phantom
of my memory.
PoemsofaDad 