Memories

All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Cats Musical, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber,
lyrics by Trevor Nunn who built the lyrics from T. S. Eliot’s street-level nocturnes, 1981

A teddy bear, a used-to-be pink pony, a purple rabbit and a plaid dog.
old, well loved, now in a box . . .
forgotten

Memories, . . .
whisps of mist swirl around my head . . .
best friends lined up on a bed,
bear chasing rabbit,
dog chasing bear,
pony chasing dog.

All held tight in sleep
so long ago.

Memories are fragments of electric impulses in my brain
producing images of days long passed
running in fields, swings, thunderstorms
pain, hospitals, surgery, alone

I wonder how I survived
to make newer, younger memories
that push old ones out

Silly cards and pictures,
picnics, bicycles trips,
mountain passes, English Pubs and
Roman walls.

Memories, a ring of promise, a ring of love
wedding night held close, and
love in long gazes.

Memory of beloved lost
staring at the empty place
a ghost image forms
my heart longs for a voice missed
I listen for the memory

Time passes so fast and
memories, it’s all I have left,
all that holds me together.

The Egyptians understood immortality.
 it is memory, remembering,
the joy, surprises, celebrations,
Yes, even the pain, failures and struggles,
when we stop remembering immortality ends.

All memories comprise a life, in this case
my life, who I am
Yet when I am gone . . .
Those memories will be gone.

Where do they go, those memories
those electric pulses that form
sounds, images, memory?
Maybe just maybe I will find out.

Ruth Jewell, ©September 16, 2026