The Obama Serenades XXVI

(In Chicago with Toots, Maya and Mom)

Like
concentric rings
of a puddle
plopped
with a stone,
we borrow memories
to afford us
a plain
and full-suited
view of
life across
ages and
climes –

places
we have known
and dreamed
about,
places
traveled
in our
moms' thoughts
dreams
and
wombs,
tales of
charming and
placid
places
regaled us
by grandmas
and
grandpas,
streams of
whose courses
of blood
we are proud
heirs –

memory
is all
there is left
of spent shells
of life
when a
momentary
present has
lapsed into
an immediate
past
and
merged
into reams
of heritage…

grainy reels
of shadows
recede into
marginal
realms
planted
between
dreams and
wakefulness,
between
the sublime
and
subliminal,
the utterly
unknown
inscrutable
and
palpable –

which is why
memory
is possessed
of no
lanes
at all,
but rather is
the very
essence of
all that
we know
and
become
through
sinuous
byways of
time…

1/1/10

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.