Am I to speak for your past?

                May I?

                Should I intrude?

For I am the spectre of your years: I was there beside you

In your cot and at your play

Now

I am all that is left

                I am the breath of your childhood

                I am the oxygen of your life

                There is no limit to my presence in your life

                                I am in your soul's deepest recess

                                                and in each drop of blood

 

For I am the cleric of your past

                        I intercede for you

                                   and  I wonder:

Do our ashen dead reach out from where they drifted,

wise on their lakeside hill or in the garden plot

                to remind you of their love

                to whisper guidance

                to support

What do you remember of the words they spoke

                Or wrote:

These, your ancestors.

What memories have they bequeathed

                to haunt the dusky corners of the room

                to drift like leaves across your Autumn life

                or to shimmer some reflected lustre?

Do you ever think of them

                from the cosmos of your world

 

I come to you from afar

                but stop at the door

And I wonder:

Am I lost to you as they are lost to you

Is my oxygen burned to ash

Have you no need of my perfect dream

Knowing nothing beyond each small minute

 

For

I am all that is left

                I have been everything and nothing

                I remember all things; I remember nothing

                I am what remains of your tender years - I am the shade of your childhood

                I am all that has passed - I am the spectre of your manhood

                I am the shaman of the tribe

                I am your radiant nimbus, drifting

                away

 

Know me as you move through the world alone

                Remember my eye's soft blue love and darker shadows

                For too soon, before you may reach for me again

                you will become all that is left

                the only memory

                .