REMEMBRANCE OF YOUTH

 

Memories – happy memories of youth –  should, in their best inception, be crafted in the

Delight of the warm sun of Autumn, caressed by the gentle North wind; cool, but not yet bitter.

That will too soon come, with the awesome responsibility of adulthood; 

Parenthood;  falsehood; neighborhood, disquietude, and similitude.

Bitter wind of Winter, tearing flesh, strewing hair, burning eyes, wreaking havoc –

Destroying youthful optimism, instilling impatient anxious paranoia

Based on bitter experience. Follows an abject fear which compels the mind to seek the

Nepenthe of intoxication –  found in wine, or the arms of a casual companion.

Searching for fulfillment, for comfort, I read Kipling, and learn that "We were promised the

Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)".

Then in a random diversion I read Paul Blackburn, who writes in a non-syntactical collage of

Disassociated thoughts, disconnected, sometimes meaningless –

And yet by strange alchemy his un-rhymes entertain, allowing me a smug conceit

That I may understand his search for a place to void his urine, in "The Assistance".

And yet later his open verse may produce  a melancholy that compels

A longing for a nostalgic excursion to the sands of my youth.

Dark twilights, warmed by a cool happiness of simple existence,

Fulfilled with the early morning sun's slow ascent, stirring

Gentle breezes which become muscular and crash the pounding surf upon the sand,

Mixing the sand of the seabottom with the foam of exuberant emotion,

Blending an awareness of the sadness of the times with appreciation for the happiness of the times.

The coolness of Summer, born in the variable Gulf zephyr is first welcome at the end

Of a hot July afternoon, then becoming too cool, drives the search for shelter, and

Provides the quench for the tempered steel of stolen happiness,

Taken in defiance of the guardians at the gates of emotion.

I know that if I return to the shores of my youth I will be

Disappointed, finding not what I remember, but a

Changed and unwilling newness, offering its own version of reality, and denying the

Remembrance of  youth.