A Hall of Memories

My face once thought 

it were cut and hewn

from very old stone.

I cannot remember my birth

because it was so 

long ago.

Perhaps it's in my 

ossified and petrified 

memory

which solidly stands like 

a long corridor along which

some can walk and see,

chiseled in my walls,

the bas reliefs of
my bygone days.

Each sculpted image depicts

no childhood of mine

no record of my growth

but timeless lessons learned

and preserved in the unchanging

stone of my personal history.

Maybe you'll pass and learn

something in them which

I forgot.

It's easy to forget when

the hall's long walls

are full of sculptors.

My days and all who fill them

are crowding around these icons

sculpting in many ways

and leaving their signatures.

Some bring sandpaper and

gently smooth my jagged depictions.

Some hammer falls hit

the backs of chisels and chip

this and that part

of my potential to the floor.

Some bring drills and bore

holes in which dynamite 

is stuck, lit and detonated

leaving craters and cavities

in my memory.

But you know,

I remember the explosions

as they send tremors through the stone

and shake my memory to life.

The sound fills the air

and I hear who I am,

in who we all were,
in what we all made.

But you know,
when the blasts fade
and the dust settles

I hear most clearly

the lonely sound of

your footfalls as they

echo down the 

corridor of my past

into my present,

like the snowflakes

which landed today, 

on my face,

and tickled the 

soft skin of my cheeks,

which surprisingly

reminded me
that though many
pass through
the hall of who I am,

I am not at all

made of dead stone.