The Summer of My Mind
I limped my way down to the lakeside,
Age-weary,
Slow.
The path familiar,
But not the same.
The water waited,
As if it knew me from the times before.
I looked out onto the water,
The lake smooth, yet calmly rippling,
And in my eyes, the vision came—
Memories of summers long past and gone.
Young voices filling the air,
Happy sounds, unrestrained.
The running jumps and slipping, too.
The soft crying that lasted not long at all,
Folded into laughter, stitched with sun,
The sunburns, long forgotten.
Bare feet on dock wood,
Wet hair clinging to cheeks,
The hush before a cannonball—
Then the splash, the echo, the ripple.
I stood still,
Not wishing to disturb the memory,
But to let it return—
Like breath held in reverence.
The lake did not speak,
But it remembered.
And I,
Held in its silence,
Let the moment stay.
How bittersweet is such memory—
The ache for a time that can never again be.
For too many years have passed,
Between now and that once upon a time.
The shoreline has shifted,
The dock replaced,
The voices grown into other lives.
Yet the water still holds it—
The echo, the splash,
The soft cry swallowed by summer.
I do not chase it.
I let it return.
I let it ache.
And in that ache,
I find the shape of who I was—
Not lost,
But still present in the ripple.
And yes, I mourn it,
From time to time.
I try not to, but that power is not mine.
That water—it still calls to me,
So very distantly.
For the water now is not the same,
Not the same as back then.
Nothing is the same,
Not even my memory.
There were other realities I have chosen to forget.
The memory I hold—the one most dear,
The one that can bring to these old eyes the tears—
Is of a moment,
Not of a day,
Or even a year.
A moment that filled a lifetime of memories,
And the tears that come to my eyes
Is the water from that lake back then.
And it lives within me.
I took it with me,
And it wants to be again,
In the lake, with me,
And laughing happily,
With the ripples of my memory.
It would laugh,
Not as it did,
But as I remember.
And I—
Again who I once was,
Not who I later became,
In that moment.
The lake does not mourn.
It reflects.
It receives.
It holds what I cannot—
The tears I cannot.
And so I turn,
Almost grudgingly,
Begin the slow walk away, again.
Not reclaimed,
But remembered.
That flawless summer,
Of my mind.
Copyright October 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved
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