Sometimes it's a word, just a word,
some Scrabble tiles arranged for maximum points;
only this word, at this moment,
though inert and imaginary,
on the page or to the ear is anything but.

Perhaps a date (the fruit or the calendar),
the price of gas, a pink rose,
the glint of light off water at sunset on the Pacific.
Then it might just be a note;
one of millions in symphonies and country songs
and hymns of praise or even jazz.
Who knows, it could be the GPS in the car
that takes your mind to a destination never entered.

It could be the smile of a newborn at the baptismal font,
or the "NO!" of an impatient toddler a pew behind you,
when the taste of communion wine transports you to Paris
where you savor a cabernet outside the Café du Pont-Neuf.
A passing lorry wipes away the River Seine and Eiffel Tower
revealing rows and rows of vines where spring is fall,
and your glass, now the color of straw, tastes tart and citrusy.
You blink at the clarity of the photo your mind has conjured...
....but you were just driving to Safeway
to get milk and chicken breasts
and you wind up sitting in the car staring at a blurry dashboard
and you wait there in the parking lot and compose yourself.

What was it about the salsa on that spicy burrito,
or the guy you passed mowing the lawn
outside that church on Foothill?
Oh, you don't know what you'll be doing
when time travel commences.
You find, however, that as shadows lengthen at dusk,
and daylight accrues toward the next summer solstice,
remembrance softens and becomes your very breath.

You hear the voice inside your head:
     ...and yet because of you, and all those moments,
     patiently awaiting the spark of recall,
     I can still smile and rise like morning sun
     slowly at times, yet inexorably,
     and walk the Bluff Trail alone, together.


© by Kent Reichert.
Used here with the author's permission.