Geoff Livingston | CC BY-SA 2.0

Echoes

How does it feel to be a baby?
How little one remembers!

From the moment
this strange, overwhelming world
first poured into my consciousness,
to now — how few are the impressions
that remain, soft splashes of colour
in a sea
of vast emptiness —

My earliest memory
is of the stars, clear and sparkling,
close in the night. I had woken
or was about to sleep —
on a balcony, it seems,
or in a courtyard or open room.
It filled me
with wonder —
perhaps for the first time.

That feeling
has echoed in me,
a distant chord,
ever since: a vision of life —
leading to a Christmas tree
soaring to the sky,
twinkling with fireflies.

— So simple
a concept — yet so basic
a thought; so full-bodied
the experience, the design.