Where Memory Becomes Forever

Out the big basement window, the wind
slathers the snow like cake icing
up against the trees as if they were
birthday candles, and smooths it over
the roof of old Cliff’s gingerbread shed,
where the rabbits would hide.

But I don’t see the path we’d carve
in those drifts, from this place to our place.
I can imagine high-stepping through
the knee-high purity of it all, though,
smell that clear and evocative smell,
as chaste as the expanse ahead of me.

If I were to fall, splat face-first into
the stinging reality of it all, I think
I’d roll onto my back and watch those
long trails of flakes and let them
redden my face. They’d be like kisses
from that place where memory becomes
forever.

– Joseph Hesch

© 2014, poem, photograph and portrait, Joseph Hesch, All rights reserved

JOSEPH HESCH (A Thing for Words) is a writer and poet from Albany, New York , an old friend of Bardo and a new core team member. Joe’s work is published in journals and anthologies coast-to-coast and worldwide. He posts poems and stories-in-progress on his blog, A Thing for Words.  An original staff member at dVerse Poets Pub website, Joe was named one of Writers Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer’s “2011 Best Tweeps for Writers to Follow.” He is also a member of the Grass Roots Poetry Group and featured in their 2013 poetry anthology Petrichor Rising.