Let’s begin with memory.
How do you usually find yourself
returning to your past…
thrust back by crisis,
needing overdue explanations
and ready to demand them?
Or slowly, a sadness
beginning to make itself
painfully evident?
Or swept away by emotion
like a swollen muddy river
on its righteous way
to take over a town?
Maybe you simply wake up
foggy after a midday nap
filled with the vague idea
someone didn’t tell you everything.
Though if you are lucky,
maybe you are be transported back
by the taste of syruped pancakes
or the smell of a box of old books,
so that you are transported
to familiar happy images
once vivid but now a bit clouded
by your mind’s cataracts,
giving you a soft sense
that all that has happened is a gift.
Anne McCrady is a poet, speaker, and peace advocate. In addition to her award-winning poetry collections Along Greathouse Road, Letting Myself In, and Under a Blameless Moon, and her original parable Kevin & the Seven Prayers, Anne’s writing appears internationally in literary journals and anthologies. Anne’s work has also been presented as short film, art song, libretto, and liturgy. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee. Anne also has editorial, review, fiction, and creative nonfiction publication credits and is an active poetry contest judge and workshop presenter. Anne lives in Tyler, Texas. Her website is www.InSpiritry.com.
