Memory is of the past
and is composed of
a flowing amalgam of
sensations, images,
emotions and understandings
that combine and reassemble
new each day
like a newspaper printed
fresh and revisited
every morning.
Memory is vivid and present,
drawn from intimate history,
from times of living
gone and not gone,
present but absent,
as a deep core
and spine in existence
that manifests in time
and transcends temporality.
Memory is connected
to time and place,
to other beings and things,
to events and relationships,
but the connections are
fragmented and unreliable
or fanciful for some.
For others memories
have a shape that appears
as real and effusive
as when it was caught
from an an event
that now may be forgotten;
it is reconstructed
as a new experience,
a new identity.
a revised being
drawn from the power
of the old to create the new.
Memory is also
formed in forgetting,
whether erased or suppressed
beneath the floating boats
of living that
sail on winds
that have always blown
across oceans of existence
deep and mysterious.
Memory finds verity
in the combined memories
of all those who
were situated together,
as witnesses to the living past,
and in the writing that
takes experience
from the fading light of age
to the artefacts that
live as long as words live.
28/9/2015