Precious Memories

Ah, summer, the barefoot days of youth.
Who forgets? Memories persist, never die, though they lie buried,
Resting peacefully in the inner chambers of our souls,
Like us, waiting to live again.

Flash-backs recollect and resurrect with taste,
A watermelon, thick, pale red, juicy, black seeds,
Transports back, relief from the heat of the day.
Mama’s call comes again, clearly resonates.

The blueberry patch, we ate more than we kept,
The strawberries, wet with dew,
The wild blackberries, thorns like barbed wire,
The cobbler worth the barbed conflict.

The fishing hole, the swimming pool,
And beach that stole our hours,
The secret climbs in sturdy oaks,
The bike rides down to town.

We stand in shadows, the shade of a tall pine tree,
Matt and I, yesterday, in Woodbine, barely a town,
Caught in the same time warp as our memories.
Empty sidewalks, a vacuum, heat stifles movement.

In the distance an apparition appears. One bike, two boys.
One peddles, the other rides free, standing on the rear wheel struts.
Here comes summer, South Georgia at its best.
They own the road. They own the day.

Like cumulus clouds in motion slow they pass by unconcerned,
Going nowhere fast. Which may be the point of it all.
In shorts, shoeless, shirtless, oblivious, all they need to own,
No watch, no wallet, no wireless, no need.

They will likely not recall this day, for memory seeps in slow.
They have today what we had in ours, freedom just to be.
Though they gave no thought to what it meant,
Still they know it, not in words, but in how it felt.

We feel it, too, the frosty Kool-Aid summers of our days gone by.
We hear a song, familiar, unforgotten, from a church far away,
Precious memories, how they linger, how they ever flood my soul
In the stillness of the midnight, Precious, sacred scenes unfold.

If only life were always so simple, as in the barefoot days of our youth.


Bud Hearn
July 19, 2013