Memories

by Donal Mahoney

If one could store them
in the attic without stir
and turn to other things,

to picking fruit, perhaps,
or seeding it, one could afford
the dalliance of an hour

for one would have the years
one knows will not be those
whose paralytic youth has just begun,

the years whose summer plea
for laughter and for kiss
somersault the hair

and scimitar the smile: the years
the sun, the moon, the stars
can never order stop.

(First published in The Miscellany: A Davidson Review Vol. 7 No. 1 Winter 1972)

first published in Houston Literary Review

art by C. Albert