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The Drive

EvilToasterElfEvilToasterElf Posts: 1,119
edited January 2004 in Poetry, Prose, Music & Art
The Drive

Pictures of stale grief fill pavement
between glimpses of the road, stolen
from the storm by windshield wipers
at their highest speed. And I drove through it.

I drove through the rain picking through memories
scattered like high beams in the evening fog.
She was always twirling through those memories,
a parade of cameos in a silent movie, black and white,

grainy as the songs that flickered at the edge
of the broadcast signal’s strength. Classic rock
to classical symphony, and a talking head plays the rusty
strings of Bible verse, all vying for clarity.

And in that static one song played
booming down the rails on a genetic train straight
from childhood wonder through teen angst, wading
through the still quiet of fatherhood.

And she laid there with our child wrapped in the
ambiguous white linens, smiling a full-toothed smile,
a cobblestone path to
my little girl, a bank vault of memory and expectation
lining my tear ducts
and winter smiles, with capital.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • YellowYellow Posts: 699
    sometimes...

    words don't get close enough to love














    not this time
    It's all yellow.


  • FelicityFelicity Posts: 339
    what would we do without the visual and aural memory of our lives? i think that is such an incredible gift in the mind, to recall virtual tours of places where we used to live, remembering where each photo was hung, where each cup stood in the cupboard, recalling favorite clothes, long ago discarded. i'll never forget the sound of the front door opening, my first telephone ringing with anticipation. and my mind makes the memory of a voice, as clear as it ever was, saying all that i ever longed to hear.

    and to hear music memory, how does that happen? nothing short of miraculous too.

    you're right, yellow, with love, words are never close enough. it's like music, it's just is.
  • YellowYellow Posts: 699
    Originally posted by Felicity
    what would we do without the visual and aural memory of our lives? i think that is such an incredible gift in the mind, to recall virtual tours of places where we used to live, remembering where each photo was hung, where each cup stood in the cupboard, recalling favorite clothes, long ago discarded. i'll never forget the sound of the front door opening, my first telephone ringing with anticipation. and my mind makes the memory of a voice, as clear as it ever was, saying all that i ever longed to hear.

    and to hear music memory, how does that happen? nothing short of miraculous too.

    you're right, yellow, with love, words are never close enough. it's like music, it's just is.


    felicity, i swear there must be another organ...
    somewhere above the stomach
    below the heart and lungs
    that place where tears and dreams come from
    and the smell of my father's sheets stays as fresh as five minutes ago
    It's all yellow.


  • FelicityFelicity Posts: 339
    it is there, exactly as you say...how moving...

    ...and all other sensory recollections, like the taste of a freshly picked strawberry, still warm from the sun, the scent of a perspiring neck, the bodily sensations of lightning-like sparks when eyes meet, that is all as real as ever, even though not immediate in realtime.

    to inwardly re-live and re-live and re-live the most pleasant and emotion-filled times, to savor their importance in making being human a valid experience, it's what all of us are made of, it's what inspires that soft organ of love and dreams.

    good night.
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