Nostalgia

In the dumbest movie they can play it on us with a sunrise and a passage of adagio Vivaldi --
all the reason more to love it and to loathe it, this always barely choked-back luscious flood,
this turbulence in breast and breath that indicates a purity residing somewhere in us,
redeeming with its easy access the thousand lapses of memory shed in the most innocuous day
and canceling our rue for all the greater consciousness we didn’t have for past, lost presents.
Its illusion is that we’ll retain this new, however hammy past more thoroughly than all before,
its reality that though we know by heart its shabby ruses, know we’ll misplace it yet again,
it’s what we have, a stage light flickering to flood, chintz and gaud, and we don’t care.

C.K. Williams

Who doesn’t love a big dose of nostalgia, even though some other part of us simultaneously tries to resist its allure? Williams’ description – “this always barely choked-back luscious flood” – is so apt. Try as we will to seize the day, be here now, be mindful of the present, we know we’re constantly losing our past – the “lost presents” – every hour and every minute. Life – it’s all we have, and it’s always slipping away from us. So, even though “we know we’ll misplace it yet again . . . we don’t care.” This little poem is so good.