Sometimes there are moments,
Like this one in the car park
An afternoon of eternity
Seems fixed in the moving of a cloud
Over the rooflines of town;
Or in that plane that droned across the sky
The morning of Aunt Sadie’s funeral.
Why should they etch themselves
Acid-deep onto the retina of memory
When all those other days
Days we’d looked forward to,
Anticipated, long and eager,
Passed flat, anticlimactic, unremembered,
And finally unrecorded?
Is it because, I wonder,
What some might call God
(but only when pissed, or sad, or both)
Bids us to remember in this way only
Things it deems important;
Sunsets, or the movement of waves
Across the bay; these transitory clouds,
The sway of the branches all around;
Moments in eternal stasis
Leaves, alternate green and gold
In lux aeternam
Even though the trees themselves
Will die in time to compost?
A holy juxtaposition
Sears like a branding,
A momentary hiss of painful joy, then
Leaves white clouds, towering in summer sky:
I will remember this, although I don’t know why.
