THE HALLOWED HALLS OF MEMORY

H. W. Bryce

The sanctuary of my memories reside

In the hallowed halls of Memory Place,

A library of my life, my loves, my legacy…

A record of my former self, my childood life.

But alas, like life itself, troubled times have struck.

It lies in ruins now, abandoned on the hill

Of lost souls and saints, alongside my childhood ways,

Each room empty, each book of memory amolding,

Each memory dribbling out like life aseeping

Underneath the door with all the years gone by.

I mount each staircase lost in echoes of the past,

The writing on each step now faded, also lost,

Maybe stolen by the ghosts that will outlast

The memories that I made, sometimes at great cost.

Once noble, always reliable, this

palacial edifice now    lost within itself

making love with the / like mistral wind

whooshing through its hallways, rattling the broken

windows, teasing the childish ghosts, make love

with empty spaces where once the memories lived.  lodged

Ceilings peeling, walls grafitied. Purpose besmirched

Now a hollow hall, like an empty mind of yore

Sans, memory, sans name, sans          sanctification.

The spiders spin their webs and sup upon      my

Memories

Image: https://pixabay.com/…/urban-urbex-lostplace-abandoned-6282…/

As this is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, I ask that you pay tribute to all care givers everywhere,

–H. W. Bryce, author of Chasing a Butterfly: A journey in poems of love and loss to acceptance