Forgive me

This is what I meant to say

before thoughts stumbled into incoherence:

I am surprised by the flood of memory

pouring through my head

when I lay it softly down to sleep.

There is no stopping it;

past, present and an end-stopped future

tumble in a whirlpool of white water,

breaching previously impermeable flood gates.

I failed to anticipate the chaos

the gift of years would bring.

We live and remember life backwards,

try to imbue each moment

with wished-for meaning,

even as we continue searching,

sometimes in sad despair,

for the something we feel awaits us

in another of the hundred lifetimes

we imagine we could have lived.

To say that all poems are about loss

is an act of rebellion

against the smallness of a chosen life.

But we never move beyond

that fleeting pulse of hope

where there is a falling to the knees

in wonder, at untrodden snow,

the tenderness of dusk,

the sky at night and the stars,

all the stars inviting our long-distance touch,

at the memory of a child's tiny fist

latched on to finger and heart.

Oh, never let me go!

What I wanted to say is

all poems are about love,

but love is an end result,

after expulsion from the warm belly

of conception,

after the innocence we need to shed,

after all;

love is the reward for endurance,

beyond the grasp of loss.