The Moment

Memories. We can't live in the past, of course, but memories can help to make the going easier in the present.

Today's poem is based on earliest memory.

I find it hard to believe that I'm going all the way back to the cradle in recalling my mother's words ... not the specific words, but the memory of the sounds, enhanced, perhaps, by the distance, the years since I heard them.

Or I may just be imagining it all, the product of my wanting to "hear" them.

When I was about two years old, I went to live with my grandparents, who reared me to adulthood. My contact with my mother was limited after that.

It would be natural for me to have more memories of my grandparents than my mother. Still, there is that connection, that need to go back as far as I can to those earliest days.

It's a wistful poem, a semi-dream poem. And I found a certain healing in the writing of it, a certain comfort in reading it again this morning. It was originally published in Capper's:

THE MOMENT

In the moment

between sleeping

and waking,

when morning light

drifts strangely

through the trees

and sounds seem

borne aloft

by distant voices,

my mother’s words

come curling back

like wood smoke

on a rainy night,

and I am comforted

by that memory.

© 2001

***

Today's word:

wistful

Afterthoughts ... in response to your comments:

Thank you, Helen, for those kind words about the poem. Even more mysterious than the workings of poems which seem to present themselves to me are the workings of memory. I find great comfort in both.

I'm delighted that you discovered "Chosen Words," Kelly~ ... and left that comment ... I like the thought that looking back on memories helps heal the heart. I might also suggest ... if you have a few minutes ... that you take a side trip to "Squiggles & Giggles." A new installment has just been posted, with a recording of my reading of "Building Poems" ... and there's a link in the lefthand column.