This week, your memoir prompt assignment is to think of a sound or a smell the reminds you of something from your past and write a post about that memory. Don't forget to incorporate the sound/smell of your choosing!
Yellowed photos, a half century old. I look at the pictures of times long gone.
The memories faded as the photographs by growing, moving, hustling.
Life goes on, gets in the way.
Until summer.
When I hear the song of locusts. Beginning hesitantly, then gaining confidence and volume. Overwhelming the other evening sounds. Tapering off to start again.
Wave after wave.
I close my eyes. And catch a wave. Fifty years drop away, and clarity returns.
I can smell the heat of summer evening. Feel the humid air that is August holding me in its damp embrace.
My dusty bare feet are rinsed clean by the arrival of dew on the grass. It's cold is a surprise against my toes.
My brothers and I climb about the old front porch. Standing atop the brick bases that hold wooden support posts . Hugging those posts while moths play daredevil with the dim outdoor porch light.
Across the old gravel road, lightning bugs arise in a cloud from the corn field. Winking yellow in the dusk. Too many to count. But we count anyway.
A memory recalled with each hesitant beginning.
Coming now, in wave after wave.
Hear the song: summer song
Music can soothe the soul as you have done here...:)JP
ReplyDeleteThis was so poetic and full of imagery and heart.
ReplyDeleteI loved the beginning. The yellowed photos took me away instantly.
My favorite line: "My dusty bare feet are rinsed clean by the arrival of dew on the grass. It's cold is a surprise against my toes." You packed such a powerful punch in so few words!
I liked the surprise dew and brick bases to the wooden posts -- I could feel those surfaces under my feet and hands.
ReplyDeleteI love this line: "Beginning hesitantly, then gaining confidence and volume." It speaks so clearly.
ReplyDeleteSummer definitely stirs up old nostalgic feelings in so many of us. It kind of has it's own smell.
Lovely post.
Very poetic - I like the line about dusty bare feet.
ReplyDeletei can see the memory of this time clearly with you. there are sounds that just take you right back, and you can imagine being there all over again. I love when its a nature sound like that, where you can revisit often, and be transported for a few moments. I think the strongest little kid smell memory I have is lighter fluid on charcoal :) every time my dad cooks out with it, I am five years old again.
ReplyDeleteI loved, loved this line, "I can smell the heat of summer evening. Feel the humid air that is August holding me in its damp embrace." Having grown up in D.C. I know exactly what heat smells like.
ReplyDeleteReading this felt like watching cherished yellow photographs flipping over. This piece had a lovely vintage pace to it.
Wave after wave.
ReplyDeleteI close my eyes. And catch a wave. Fifty years drop away, and clarity returns.
I can smell the heat of summer evening. Feel the humid air that is August holding me in its damp embrace.
Yes!
You are so right--locusts are the song of summer. Just thing of them makes me feel warm.
ReplyDeleteI thought the description of their sing, gaining confidence, wave after wave, was very powerful.