She bathes within it, her lavender scent, and I lie suffocating in it,
her alluring fragrance, undeniably my weakness.
Am I to be so easily led astray, so easily
persuaded, by what I feel
struggling within its undulating rhythm permeating within a breath
of air. An enchanting sweetness, utterly overwhelming,
reminiscent of the tears she had wept, and I,
clinging desperately onto the moment
enveloped within an increment
remembering hearing the echoes of her lingering footsteps…
Is one to have taken a backward glance, as have I,
revealing a recollection of once dearly
painful as the remembrance has regrettably become. She awakened
within the dawn wrapped around her thoughts, the memories
which revealed themselves in her sleep;
concert. The Beach Boys were playing in Salina. She remembered
Herman and the Hermits were the openings at. She lay
remembering, Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A lovely
Daughter, as she hummed a few notes.
Golden strands of past shoulder-length hair, the pattern and the
colour of her paisley dress whose hemline rose to four
It was the summer of 1968, a most turbulent time.
Race riots and the war in Vietnam, the assassination of
Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
People were dying, the young and the old. She remembered her
tie-dyed dress and bell bottom jeans. Although she didn’t
She wept, remembering the peace rallies, which didn’t stop the war
not the chaos which raged on and on and on and would never stop
until the troops began to pull out in 1973. And even the war
wasn’t entirely over until 1975. She remembered Boonesfarm
and Ripple Wine, Make Love, Not War, The Doors, Janis Joplin,
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the movie, The Way We Were…
Within the dark of that early dawn, she wept, and she smiled, as
she took that backward glance, reliving her life, as another
a moment passed her by, in the time of make-believe, in betwixt
a tear and a memory, this early morning fantasy of her wearing
An enchantress, one who would take your breath away…
Had I imagined her, as I have so many times in the past?
A figment of my imagination, my grandiose illusion…
Never have I regretted awakening to it, the remains of a memory.
About James Sterling
James began writing at 13, and he has published about 12500 pages of poetry on Facebook! He retired from work at the age of 62.
James is proud to share that he never edits what he has written, which is the beauty of his writing!!
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