0173 Memory's Fast Rewind Poem by Michael Shepherd

Sometimes memory
runs back like an instant fast rewind
like it’s said to do at death
and hits you wham between the eyes
with your own life

today – what, November 19 – I was
chilling out in the pub
again
relaxing into life
and there, framed in the window was
a lady (as she was today) crossing the road
dressed, this cool-cold day, in black tights and
a woollen two-piece suit in Christmas red, and
the red…
took me back so many years
that I didn’t know whether to be grateful
for the glimpse, or
regret the fast grey years between…

it must have been when I was two and a half
and for the first time in my life
my parents sought a hint
(first time in their lives too)
about The Big One for my Christmas –
walked oh so casually with me through
the glittering store as if for
no-one, everyone, anyone
but me … and there it was –
the pedal car in gleaming, buy-me red
with all the details I still can’t bear to describe
enamelled like a glimpse of paradise

and sure enough, come Christmas Day
there it was – except –
(I punctuate like Emily D when out of breath…)
in blue

how can a child be adult enough to be
grateful for a second-best? And how
can parents be a child again and know?

I had forgotten until now how the seasons had their colours –
pink Valentines almost merging into complex mauve in
Easter cards, and icing, marzipan, and yellow chicks, summer days
needing no coloured herald but the sun
then autumn colours ambivalent
with the apprehension of new classes, and
new threats…

and all this time, at just this time of year
Christmas red shouts loud its herald’s trumpet
of paradise; promised; lost;
perhaps, regained