Unlocking
Hear Mary-Jane read this poem
I like it when the wind subsides
and the grass doesn’t move …
except that you feel a little left behind.
There is the smell of yellowed pages,
fresh bread, old summers, and childhood;
and the mills—their sails turning in the wind,
marking time—and the faded mansions, still beautiful.
Silent memories now, so far back;
it might as well be the beginning.
Memories I can’t quite trust,
shifting like clouds, talking over one another,
like wet gravel glinting under the sun.
You see it too; sharing it is the risk of darkening it,
of losing it forever.