… Not Fade Away

Once we have happened, in this moment, this place

and we look back in joy or grief, that memory

becomes itself the mark of that time and space;

the next recollection, a remembrance of the memory,

and so on, repeated, and so, and so ...

you are removed from me by my love for you.

Each time I think of you I push your reality

further to a sketched creation,

it is a ghost image, the mind's eye shaded

by synapses. I should not chase dreams but banish all thought of you

until the desperate dead of night, when my soul cries,

then focus all will on the comfort of our past.

But you come unbidden when I merely blink,

imagination surprised by a touch or a snatch of song

to simulation of your eyes, the curve of your lips,

each glimpse an erasure, a blurring.

What I see has become a ghost,

a ghost of a ghost, a delicate trace.

You are lost to me by my yearning

to be back home in your loving grace.

Help me, my darling, I can't remember your face.