Storms of Venus
That rise
From sidewalks
In pouring rain,
Past voices
That rebuked
My youth
Return again;
Lines of rain
Weave a tapestry
Of pain,
Crackling with
Crumpled cellophane.
In haunted doorways
Down the lane
Spirits mock
That I still suffer pain—
A bitter ache
Can't be erased
With benzocaine.
Brooding sylphs
Of youth long forgot
Tempt me
To recall your ghost
Memories now distant
As storms of Venus…
Yet I cherish each moment.
This poem made me wonder: what if we could return at will to moments of the past, to witness/share them from our past selves, without them sensing us, how many could resist the temptation - and how many would find those first beautiful moments of love reigniting the fires inside us?
On the darker side, I believe many would devote too much time to those bitter, tortured moments we wish to forget.
These kinds of musings you're describing are the very thing that prompted my first novel, A Familiar Rain, which actually took twenty years to write - it was simmering inside me that long - my wife typed the first draft and then it sat in a file cabinet where I taught - I was obsessed with an incident recounted by Wilder Penfield, the famous Canadian brain surgeon who had performed open brain surgery on a woman and his probe accidentally touched a part of her brain that caused her to relive a moment from her past. Meditating on the consequences of that resulted in the book.