Letting Go

Memories fall
from brain twigs and branches,
hover in autumnal air
drift onto a carpet of thoughts
redolent with life.

Falling one by one.
A word is forgotten. A place. A name.
A friend, gone these many years.
Sometimes a capricious breeze
frees a shower of golden reminiscences –
Oft read books. Career accomplishments.
Intellectual achievements.
Names
of children and grandchildren
drift onto a carpet of memories.
Places and pictures. Faces. Smiles.
crumble to leaf mold
Dust of a lifetime. Forgotten realities.

Fifty years gone in a sigh
blurred by November mists.
Desiccated thoughts
Specks in a ray of light
touch the tattered carpet
moldering to a realm apart from existence.
No past. No present.
No life as it was.
The branches are bare.
Life particles
hover
waiting
lifted one last time
to drift.
to sink
into
oblivion