Especially interesting, Max, & neatly tied together, because I was listening to a science program (CBC Quirks & Quarks) the other day on how for older people memory actually works, & rally the older memories have a bunch of contexts to allow us to get to them more easily than the recent ones, where the contexts just aren’t there (much)…
Doug
On Jun 10, 2015, at 8:40 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
Douglas Barbour
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Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
There is no life that does not rise
melodic from scales of the marvelous.
To which our grief refers.
Robert Duncan.
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