Memories Out Of The Blue

Ageing is a funny thing:
You don’t remember what you ate
For breakfast; day or date;
A dozen little things of late…
But classmates from when you were eight,
The teacher’s name and where you sat
As fresh I-don’t-know.
Time used to go so slowly
In the summer holidays.
You, left to roam the streets alone;
The ice cream man, his ice cream van
Jingling melodiously;
Playing ‘potsy’ on the sidewalk,
Marking out the form with chalk;
Trolley cars still rumbling by
Soon to flee, be
Changed for buses, electricity.
There still was coal, an icebox.
I was six.
Wagons rolled, pulled by a horse.
Who would think the time could blink
And nineteen forty-one would sink
Into oblivion: friends gone,
The matinee on Saturday,
Chinese three course lunch a dollar,
Mommy hollering to come inside;
Brooklyn memories that hide till now,
When from the blue, unasked,
Incongruous, an echo and a powder
Banks of memory pour out unmasked.

Memories Out Of The Blue 1.17.2021 Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin