The Healing Journey

Almost a Memory

What is it that the song awakes in me?
Almost a tear — almost a memory;
A fleeting, lonely something that evades,
A glimmering of memory that fades
And vanishes as I pursue — and yet,
Something it is my heart cannot forget.

What is this haunting thing within the strain
That stores some deep, long buried, hidden pain
Within the heart of me — a yearning there?
My groping fingers clutch the empty air,
The ghost uncaptured, unrevealed — and yet,
Something it is my heart cannot forget.

And now the song has ended — quiet falls,
And I am left still wandering the halls
Of reverie, lost in my fruitless quest
Of half-remembered things locked in my breast.
What is it that the song awakes in me?
Almost a tear — almost a memory.

— Helen Lowrie Marshall