Watermarks

~ A meditation on the ways memories imprint our psyche ~

A wise man once said
The past is no longer with us but
It’s not quite like that, with me.

Under velvet sheets of peach skin
Sleeps a kitchen, warm with steam,
Mason jars on tea towels, barefoot
I watch the last warm curves of summer
Slipping through my mother’s hands,
Peach-drenched.

In the step of a stranger walks an uncle
Still-young, faded jeans and work boots
Edged in brick dust, eyes green and
Edged in defiance, sun-burned arms in a
Sleeveless T-shirt bent under the hood of
An old red Chevelle.

In the throb of a motorcycle engine
Lies a street in a lost beach town, hair
Blowing in summer salt wind, coconut
Rimmed, our first beer in a beach bar,
Legal with lime and Sweet Caroline
In white shorts.

Some memories are heavy things,
Clock weights of sunken brass
Defying the pull of the key as they
Rise, some whisper-soft, baby breath
In the curve of my neck, gone
Before I can move. 

But they are all there, in the creak
Of a swing painted blue, in a laugh,
In a glass of blackberry brandy by a
Rain-kissed window, in that last curve
On the road home, young hands in
Red dash lights.

My memories all wind through tulip
Springs and autumn-flying geese, in
Flannel sheets in childhood winters,
Half-asleep and listening to my father’s
Footsteps going down the stairs in the
Still-dark morning.

My grandmother’s voice whispers from
African violets, from garden-fresh radishes
On buttered bread, I am watching her
Hands stirring lemonade, and the grapes
Are swelling, summer-drunk and silent,
Outside her door.

I wish sometimes that I could hold
One memory in my hands without a
Hundred others spilling out, recalling,
Engulfing me in this river of places
And faces long gone, time-haunted,
But I can’t.

They lie enshrined, a song entwined
In roads and rain and summer wind –
Watermarks in skin.

-s. rochelle