Poem -- Nostalgia

I have passed this way before

And nostalgia grips me now

Asks me to seek out old haunts

Revisit old friends

Peer into unknown faces

Gaze into their eyes for a mark of familiarity

Perchance to say, or to hear,

“I know you, although you

Have forgotten me.

We have met before

And loved

When you were someone else

And I had a different face…

“And this, my long-lost friend…

This is where you sorrowed

For your many losses

And we shed our tears with you, for you.

“See these trees that have grown so tall

Indifferent to your existence or mine…

We watered them together

In a bygone age

When they were saplings.

By giving them our tears

We gave them life.

“And these stone walls still echo

Our whispers, our laughter

Yours and mine.

The dusty silences still hold

Our memories frozen in time

Although you have forgotten.”

Nostalgia…

Memories that are not quite memories

But only a place in the mind where memories used to live…

Deserted, yet not quite deserted

Empty, yet not quite empty

Silent, yet not quite so…

Yes, I know that the past has

No more meaning left in it

Than an empty husk.

And the future is but a promise

That each day, each moment, makes

As it goes by.

Yes, I know that the present moment

Is all there is to life.

But how shall I tell that to my mind

Which searches for meaning in the past and the future

So much that it lets the present moment

Slip through unnoticed

As though it barely exists?