Come Together Poetry Annex

Echoes Of My Mind

by Terri

With age, the mundane realities of this world wither, dry up and blow away. The magical fantasies grow and swell, bursting into glorious bloom. As life's tide ebbs with the inevitability of entropy, the soul soars into graceful flight, transcending both time and space.

Random memories leap to life at odd intervals.

While washing dishes, I relive the gut-twisting terror of a nightmare I had when I was five. Even after thirty-odd years, the impact is sufficient to steal a breath or two.

As I drive to work, my memory whisks me back twenty-three years. I watch my daughter appear in my kitchen door at age two, something green and squirmy dangling from her mouth. Fighting to overcome an unsettling mixture of nausea and hilarity, I solemnly tried to explain why she shouldn't eat caterpillars, even if they did taste good.

Desperately looking for the telephone bill (which I'm sure I put in a safe place yesterday when I came across it while looking for the light bill), I stop as I "hear" a familiar sound. With a shiver of pleasure and grief, I
recognize Maw-Maw's tuneless whistle as she cheerfully sweeps out the carport. Even as I go to look, I know she's not there--she died ten years ago.

Walking through the hall today, I imagine myself small again,
clinging tenaciously to Paw-Paw's left leg as he stagger-walks up the front steps. Maw-Maw grumbles softly as she supports both of us from his right side. Sublimely happy in his inebriation, Paw-Paw is grateful for my presence, knowing she won't lecture him too much while I'm there.

Wandering around outside on a glorious spring day, I see once more our old wood-frame house, and I watch myself carry fifty-pound burlap sacks of all-grain horse feed down to the barn with youthful strength and grace, reveling in the heady smell of molasses and raw corn.

During the preacher's droning sermon, I return to the days of my childhood, when I could spend my day on Gai'a's lush green carpet, gazing raptly at the azure ceiling of this cathedral, watching the fluffy white cloud-cars of the angels as they drifted past. At night, on that same thick rug, I frequently marveled at the billions of star-diamonds sparkling on the rich black velvet of heaven.

Seeing a young mother go by, I recall the incomparably sweet softness of my firstborn's breath, the strong fragility of her tiny, grasping fingers, the innocent wisdom in her hazy-clear eyes.

As I smell the odor of diesel exhaust in present-day rush hour, I'm transported back to my father's sawmill. From the tall sawdust mountain where I've proclaimed myself king, I watch the huge forklift carry entire trees around as if they were twigs.

Baby powder usually evokes each of my three children's births, each the same yet unique, each ordinary yet special. To me, they always seemed to be tiny people, never infants, and they waited with sagacious patience for their poor mother to learn to care for their needs.

If I smell the pungent bouquet of cows in a pasture, I'm instantly riding like the wind, once again on the bare back of my trusty steed, across the pipeline that my imagination has transformed into the plains of the Wild West. Whether I am cowboy or Indian depends on my mood that day, but being the "good guy" never changes.

A glance from my lover sends me to the first time we made love, and the wonder and thrill that came with the absolute certainty of at last finding my life's mate. My knees wobble slightly and my stomach flutters, my fist clenching tight to keep from reaching for him in the crowded room.

The clip-clop sound of hooves re-creates the dusty world of
small-town rodeos, where everyone knows everyone else, where you have to ride off into the night to sneak an illicit cigarette, because someone will see and tell your mama. The smell of leather and sweaty horseflesh overwhelms me with the desire to ride again, although the horses have long since been sold and I haven't been astride one in decades.

These journeys back in time and space may be spurred by sights, smells, emotions, sounds, or an intangible something, enigmatic and
indefinable.

How do they happen? Is there some short-circuit in the brain that gives them to us, an ill wind blowing good? Are they the gift of a benevolent supreme being, allowing us to go gently into that ultimate night? Are
they the caprice of demons, taunting us with those things that can never be again? Does the soul seek to remind us of Life's lessons learned, of those things we appreciated all too seldom and lost all too soon?

Who can know? The Great Spirit's plan is far too complex for my paltry speculation. I am just grateful for any small glimpse into the past. I find it sad and scary to realize that there will probably come a time when it's
all lost to me, when my children are strangers and my own history a mere haunting echo of a lovely melody I can never quite hear.

In the great scheme of things, my memories, my echoes, don't amount to much. But measured by my soul's yardstick, they loom infinitely
tall. They themselves are the measure of my humanity, the standard by which I judge myself and others. My perception colors them all in the brightest and darkest hues imaginable. Never will they be pale or dull.

Even busy people benefit from second, and third, looks at days gone by. Our lives would not be nearly as rich without them. In the private sanctum of our minds, we are never enjoined to "get real" or to "act our age." We are free just to be. Whatever we want, whenever we want, it's all there waiting.

Or is it?

When that inevitable time comes that I am adrift from my
memories, will they be gone?

Or will I?