The Persistence of a Memory of Apricot Shampoo

The Persistence of a Memory of Apricot Shampoo

by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot

her name, her face, the reason that we loved...

and yet I hold her close within my thought:

I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair

that fell across her face, the apricot

clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed

so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood

and bears me to that night, that only night,

when she and I were one, and if I could...

I’d reach to her this time and, smiling, brush

the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact

each feature, each impression. Love is such

a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone

before we recognize it. I would crush

my lips to hers to hold their memory,

if not more tightly, less elusively.

Published by The Raintown Review, The Eclectic Muse, Kritya, Gostinaya (in a Russian translation by Yelena Dubrovin), Boston Poetry Magazine, Freshet, Jewish Letter (Russia), Poetry Life & Times, Sonnetto Poesia, Trinacria, The New Formalist, Pennsylvania Review

Keywords/Tags: Sonnet, memory, persistence, memories, remember, remembrance, reminiscences, perseverance, love, name, features, face, hair, eyes, lips, crush, desire, longing, lust, impression, recognize, recognition, remember, remembered, forgot, forgotten, angel, wan, night, flood, apricot shampoo