Memory (Triolet)

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend

- Henri Bergson

The mind is wily in remembrance; storing frozen images of experience

no movie trailers of past events replaying in order, only still life.

Captured as a broken lens would, moments of fractured resemblance,

they should create a resource, but lack clarity and coherence;

they should be useful at reunions and other events of social appearance.

Instead, little carousel slide shows drift willy-nilly across the mind’s eye;

ragged around the edges, in grayscale or sepia tones of diffidence,

they flutter across my closed eyelids, these frozen images of experience.

There is one of me at six or seven sitting upon a pine tree stump just my size

in the warm sun, looking sober and petite, my daddy looking back at me.

We are walking on Little Dry Creek Road pine woods on either side,

between my house and Anna’s, a regular ritual of ours traipsing outside

why does my mind not replay the father-daughter love, the prize

that abides?  A picture not of 1000 words but of sensations of safety,

and comfort, a drug, a shot, a boost of heart, snapshots that bring smiles                   

that touch all the senses and have the power to heal me.

The real work is to rewrite history, to revisit the old fuzzy memories

that haunt or pain the soul and touch them up, color them heroic.

Take back the fears, wash them with courage and print them in a new diary

as happy stories, lessons learned with joy and remembered in giddy reverie.

Let the memories cease their unchanging stillness nor carry sorry worries

into the heart.  Transform the mind, engineer the brain to rage poetic

with brave words, bold thoughts and intrepid plans of adventure and mystery;

newly tattoo the soul with hopeful images; build a new past and love it.