Red Memory, a poem

Red Memory

Ensconced within my brain
there is a shard of memory,
a rounded daub of redness
sculpt in high relief, indelible,
its permanence achieved

by means beyond my ken,
but pertinent, I think,
to nature’s plan
for everlasting life -
and long may it persist!

Its vivid female shape,
encased in bathing dress
above Cayuga’s lake,
found my eye but once,
on a sultry summer day

as I was bussed away
to war, the author
of the image and her fate
never known to me,
as that one surely

never knew the force
her form transferred to me.


James M. Moose