Poetry Jam this week is celebrating trains and train journeys and has invited participants to write about something including trains. I opted for the figurative rather than the literal journey in this instance. Here is my offering:
Pages from the Past
A notebook by pure chance discovered,
Brings back old pages from the past;
As my experiences lie bare, uncovered
My feelings backwards are cast.
The even script, my younger self belies
My thoughts of yore, there manifest.
Old tears, laughter, truths and even lies
Appear on pages, like flowers pressed.
My heart’s first stirrings faithfully recorded
The bitter disappointments, and the sheer joy;
I read, and on the train of the past boarded,
Travel to foreign parts of me, as then, a boy.
My inner being revels and I resonate
With my younger self, my innocence engaged;
I look at my wrinkled face, surprised that fate
Has willed a youth, in body so much aged.
My pages from the past, the yellowed paper,
The mind’s awakening and my soul’s flight,
Captured forever and their evanescent vapour
Wafts in, a sweet aroma, a bright light…
I love this poem, Nicholas. It's bitter-sweet and poignant.
ReplyDeleteAnd our life flashes past as a train in those last moments...
ReplyDeleteWistful and rather poignant… I like dthe rhyming in this.
ReplyDeleteI love long and luxurious train trips... it is the only way to be able to see a country other than your own (and your own as well). You can watch the passing country side, then stop in the next big town for a day or less, absorbing all the sights on foot. What could be better?
ReplyDeleteMy goal is to get to every long distance luxury train trip before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Sofar the plan is going well :)
Such a pleasant feeling to this poem--love the idea of the past being a journey to a foreign place.
ReplyDeleteIt is such a gift when one discovers something like an old notebook with which one can look back into the past & relive those times that one's younger self experienced. Even if one finds these thoughts on yellowed pages, they are things that are important to the writer & can indeed give insight.
ReplyDeleteI guess that finding such a notebook must be both a fascinating and nostalgic experience. It certainly helps us see how far we have come and to what extent we have changed.
ReplyDeleteIt can be fun to stumble upon something from our younger years. This definitely had a nostalgic feel to it and I loved . . .
ReplyDeleteOld tears, laughter, truths and even lies
Appear on pages, like flowers pressed.
Simply, a beautiful poem - my favorite of this Poetry Jam prompt.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of my lost notebook that captivated feeling, emotion and even poems written in my growing years...sigh...a lovely trip down memory lane...
ReplyDeleteWonderful poem!
ReplyDeleteThis really captures those lost moments of the soul and days of regret, Can't decide if its half full or half empty, perhaps that is the magic of it.
ReplyDeleteMemories captured and relived through yellowing pages. Very nice poem.
ReplyDeleteI like this idea of travelling back through time as if one were on the train, jumping on and off at different stations to linger over events along the continuum of our lives ...
ReplyDelete