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.