White Mules and a Column of Smoke
I am thinking of a place I’ve never seen or visited,
much like Heaven or Jot ‘Em Down, Texas, but with better
beverages and the advantage of hindsight and seasoning,
a glance back or to the peripheral, with a side of memory
and sliced, pickled jalapeños topping a pile of imagination.
And how do we so clearly remember what never occurred?
That book I read in 1970 was first published three years
later. A drowned childhood acquaintance ordered a beer
and sat next to me at a party in college. The open fields
I recall from the garden walls in France, where homes stood.
If only we carried with us slide shows or grooved vinyl
to trace back our lives – photos and recordings of those daily
remembrances – detailed notes indexed on cards, or data
embedded in our palms and accessed by eye twitches.
Would such evidence improve our lives?
Which filters shutter moments and thoughts, twist them
into balloon animals we no longer recognize? False
accusations and convictions aside, can we trust what we
know to be true? That oak stands where it has for four
decades. I bleed when cut. The sky still leers above us.
“White Mules and a Column of Smoke” was drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30/30 challenge. I am grateful to Natalie Butler, who sponsored the poem and whose photo inspired me.
O at the Edges 
I remember these thoughts reeling through your head long before you put them down.
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Reeling, staggering, whirling! 🙂
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Well written, Full of vivid images.
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Thanks very much.
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Curious indeed how memories are twisted into “balloon animals we no longer recognize”. This can be a blessing …
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Memory is so unreliable, at least in my experience. I have such vivid false memories!
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Bob this is an entire story unto itself:”A drowned childhood acquaintance ordered a beer and sat next to me at a party in college.” The layers in here are groovy. 😉
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My memory is extremely groovy, if not downright screwy. 🙂
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Ha!
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Thank you. Cable bills are terrible indeed, but we need better streaming service too.
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I’m firmly on the streaming side.
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Thank you. But do you have all the channels from your streaming service? Have a safe and happy Easter.
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To be truthful, I watch very little tv, and the services I use provide more than I need.
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I enjoyed reading this!
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I’m so pleased it resonated for you. Thanks very much!
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Fantastic! What a concept.
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Thank you, Lee.
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yes, the sky is not sympathetic to memory’s plight. It feels like a grotesque balloon most days.
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Let’s hope it morphs back into something more pleasant.
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Ah, those memories, true or false, do become distorted, for better and for worse.
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I don’t mind those with crumbling, faded edges, but the memories of events that never occurred, well, that’s a different story,
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My mum used to call it a vivid imagination.
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It is that!
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I love the dreamy sense of unreality about this, which of course calls into question the whole notion of reality. I initially read “Would such evidence improve our lives?” as “Would such evidence prove our lives?” Both worthy questions.
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Oh, I love your reading. Wish I’d written that!
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