Memory Love Poem by Lonnie Hicks

She languishes there among my memories

making fleeting and unexpected appearances;

cupid's arrows still flying true

to my heart stone;

before I can look to see

she is gone again,

mixing in perfectly among other opaque

things which live too inside my mind.

She would lay sometimes in full view

on her Cleopatra Sofa

almost it seemed
reachable

but no;

my extended mental hand

would reach
grasping only air

and she is gone again-

I'm sure after feasting
on that perfect cantaloupe

of my adoring glances.

She remains most times perfectly still

for all memory is perfectly still


and that is its curse-she never ages

in my mind over the many years since

I saw her last;

while I have.



The tragic irony here is

I have moved on and she remains

living there pristine

in that Memory World which I provide,

my gift to her.



Perhaps actually seeing her

would ruin things for she and I.



So I will keep her in her perfect world;

it is the least I can do

for my Old Perfect Love

and hope too, that I
inhabit a similar place
in her mind.