Stirring the pot of memories

The jasmine returns, white faced, blush of pink,

the tendrils lacing through my mind,

reaching back into the dark bin of years -

walking along the dirt track in Blackburn,

heading towards the lake – I was

a student of Drama, a  stumbling writer of poetry,

wearing the white cotton shirt, with the three buttons

and large collar, that I dearly loved

and lost, like so many things,

one drunken night somewhere, with someone -

Most likely I woke in the morning and it was gone

without a memory of where or how

as I said

like so many things -

It was the 70’s or perhaps

it was fresh-faced 1980 and drugs were freely shared

without the desperation there appears to be nowadays

or was it just

that I was so much younger then and unaware

of the desperation, thinking it

was just the normal state of being, as if my feet

were always in rich loam, fed

by the rain of new experiences and the feel

of new hands to hold, like roots gripping the earth?

We shared a house in Laburnum,

it had Jasmine -

that’s the trigger, the scent, the pink flowers that haven’t opened,

the ones that have, and your face somewhere,

wrapped in all those tendrils,

the words lost but the ache

throbs still, verdant even after all these years.

We may grow old and we may grow weary

but our memories

are forever ours and, like scent,

remind us of all the chances lost,

the way our lives, like the jasmine’s creeping tendrils,

take us always in search of the light

but, mistakenly, away from it also.