Today there are two completely different poems centred on the theme of remembering. The act of remembering is complex – a memory can be triggered by the slightest thing: a smell, a word, a sensation, anything. But once triggered our minds pull us back to that time and it becomes real again. Some memories we never want to revisit, others we cling to with desperation. And no two people remember the same event in the same way. Present emotions can determine how we interpret a long ago event. And then of course the act of involuntary forgetting – no matter how hard we try some memories are lost to us forever.
Un/retold story
What is my origin story?
The desert and ochre sand
the toes dug in so I could stand
The darkness and terror of night
The smell of gran's baking
her hugs, like I was the only one.
The self-created messes
the sins no-one confesses
the first time I spread my wings to breathe
And imagined what I could be.
My origin story
Lost in the forests of my memory
Fading into a fog, a mystery
Only fine steel tendrils entwine
Around my past, present and future time
Their grip is inescapable
and legacy unimaginable.
Going on
Touch of hand
Sound of voice
Dark of night
Beat of heart
A moment so fleeting
We will wonder if it ever happened
That blink of eye transience
Of human existence
Comforting moments become painful
When they are gone
And we who are left
Are forced to go on.
Longing for
your touch of hand
the sound of your voice.
Angele Toomey Poetry 