Book of Memories

You cannot touch your childhood

I have written books about it

Looked at pictures

Returned to monuments

Sat in the silence and through focus and breath

Attempted to relieve fleeting moments in time

Much like a comet whizzing between the earth and the moon

Under a winter moon

Surrounded by deafening snow

The kind of snow that absorbs noise

Its not heavy snow but steady and shuts people in their homes

Cars off the road and apes in front of fireplaces

I felt the silence

I watched the snow flakes fall to the ground and cast their shadow

beneath the yellow street light and onto my virgin driveway

I was H.G Wells

Stepping off my great invention

For a moment I was on Chestnut Street

Like two positive magnets passing too close

This feeling began to repel

Reaching out with my mind

I wished for more deafening snow

Could I focus more to grab hold of that moment?

Young again and naive to the suffering of so long life

The more I struggled to hold onto the feeling

The further it drifted

We can merely pass close to childhood

Never touch

Two passing starships

One from the galaxy of memory

Another from the Here and Now Nebula

The cold reminds me of 7th street park

and how the numb toes and shivering were inconsequential

If we could just sit with her a little while longer

I turn to face my home

A warm glow inside

My wife and her eyes

Neptune

My sons

The gifts I never deserved

Why do we cry out for a touch of the past?

Why do we gamble the present for the future?

My world, inside that warm Virginia home, fire crackling

It simply doesn’t get better

Maybe, the great battle is in counting our blessings

Like a mantra

Like Mala

108 daily blessings

and watch the past like an old reel

Regard the future as sparingly as possible