Carousel

Somehow, I’m still learning to understand that culmination between “it feels like yesterday” and “it has been forever;” I guess that’s just one of those things that comes with age and loss, perhaps. What’s striking, in those moments, though, is the little glimmers that are left - the miniscule pieces that come wafting back, even when the craters of the loss seem to ache the strongest.

Eighteen years
yet the carousel
just keeps turning
off Hiawatha Boulevard

and after sixty point five
miles and light years of memories
I took that familiar drive
the left past Sweetheart Corner
the neon bulbs long faded

sitting among the liriope
I couldn’t help but notice
that the mica still shimmers
as I watched the sunlight
glean off the granite
remembering you

though science says in death
hearing is the last
sense to leave
I find that monotonous
cadence of the carousel
has stolen the sound
of your voice

yet I remember you fondly still
dressed in blue plaid and smiling
the grasp of that final goodbye
and the embers you left
reminding me to always
set the world on fire

9.28.2006