Thoughts from Driving Yesterday

Flashing images as memory gives
brief glimpses of past moments:
I feel and see the sun of a ‘49 summer or
an afternoon September warmth near the high school;
or I smell dinner, or perfume of a
cold January sidewalk at midnight.
I hear voices of laughter, or music, or wind
in the open car window;
or taste hot chocolate or cheeseburger at the Athens Grill;
or feel warm flesh of hand,
embrace of first of 1001 kisses of soft searching lips.
And when these images, senses, spark by, I ache.
Oh how I ache for a longer, lingering visit,
a stronger revisiting memory;
to see or hear or feel or taste the flashback,
framed nano-seconds memory:
green the grass, yellow the sun, deep the shade,
cool the coke, hard the struggle
to be liked or accepted or understood
or simply appreciated for what I was.
I am actually alive in these moments
again with senses, yet,
in a nano second, one tenth of a blink,
it is gone.
I cannot bring emotions to mind on purpose,
though can intentionally remember,
as if scenes are prompted by
identical sensory events. But whatever,
it is a delightful ache, a wonderfully human capacity
to recall emotions of a moment,
feelings of a second of time,
so long gone
ticking into eternity.

Richard E. Lake