Max Cheers keep stepping with dog!P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 10 June 2015 15:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'Spring Again'
Spring Again
Stepping once more forward
into fresh morning wakens
me doubly - am I doubling back?
Now and again, and now, the past
appears to my mind's eye, alive
as if to be lived again.
And so much more of it
than there is of present! -
whether pains or pleasures
or that funny mix, that brew
of old pains strangely sweetened,
woken, recreated now.
So much Now is merely
got through, forgettable.
What lives on in memory
seems of value, otherwise
it would have been crowded out,
overwritten, faded, erased.
Oh experiences of value
surely have vanished too!
And yes, one ought to be
'fully alive in the present'.
Pay attention! your reward
is abundant significance -
no need to remind me of this.
But with the best will in the Now
mind keeps being flooded,
invaded from below
by a warm comforting flow
as if now weren't warm also!
For others the word refuge
may apply - I'm no refugee,
striding Seattle's hills,
breathing in spring perfumes.
Ah, how that takes me back.
I'm walking Auckland - early
work-mornings again - suburban
front gardens in fresh bloom,
more spring in my stepping,
my postie's leather-satchel
shoulder-strap lopsiding me,
squandering my bloom of youth
then in such moments - then
and gone - yet not gone, here again.
Lopsided still, thanks to the leash
in my hand, a young dog
breathing it all in, keeping me
moving, now - well, much of me.
Auckland 1957 - Seattle, May 2015=
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