Hour Five

Memories tucked into
my breast pocket
left and close to my heart.
They flutter like eyelids
just waking from slumber-
fractured images
play upon the screen of thought
a tribute to remembrance
to lives previously lived
during my years on the back roads.
The gravel of experience
kicking up rocks
and dusty clouds as I move forward.
The ancestors of self
passed away by the alchemical chemicals
of compounded experience
of former versions in former chapters.
I reach out and touch a few
running my fingers across their edges
flipping through the pages of life
like ribbons
while others catch up on the hem of
emotions and slice into my skin;
the salt of tears an anesthesia
to the wistful recollections of
the hourglass
whose sand had run it’s last cascade.
Some are moonlit passages
bathed in shadows and blurred vision
that had circumvented the stony path.
I lift the camera lens of my eyes
and snap another memory
like fingers-a metronome of observation
in my rhythm of living.
I tuck it in with the rest
sealing and threading the edges in,
minding where I had come from
and just how far I’ve gone-
just another moment of self captured
and folded into the realms of memory.