Memory's Connection
by Michael Doyle

Memory goes beyond mere collection.
Below the skin is the synaptic connection.
Life is weathered by the sun and the rain,
Until there is no awareness left in the brain.

Dementia is nature's worst solitude,
Alone in the night where emptiness intrudes.
Alzheimer's scraps away at the memory
Until you don't even remember your family. 

Lost deep inside the valley where we forget,
Life has lost all meaning but that of regret.
Deep inside the eyes of the lost is the burn
Of thinking of how much a soul can unlearn.

One by one, though we try our best to trace,
One by one, we somehow forget the loving face.
The one we have known deeper than our very own,
Lost memories bruise us deeper than the bone. 

Self-identity oozes away until it is gone entirely.
Grounded in feelings of touch, we lose our humanity.
It's inescapable how timelines collapse into a blur,
And fragments of thought can't quite form to occur.

Lost deep inside the valley where we forget,
Life has lost all meaning but that of regret.
Deep inside the eyes of the lost is the burn
Of thinking of how much a soul can unlearn.

Thoughts become tethered fractals of a tree
That rips out the core of what passed as memory.
It is a cruel world in which to be left alone,
We lose ourselves in a whirlwind twilight zone.

Plunging face first into this unbreakable wall,
The memories carried are not just what we recall.
It's for the kids and the hope to break the chains,
That the wounded refuse to slip down memory's drains.

Lost deep inside the valley where we forget,
Life has lost all meaning but that of regret.
Deep inside the eyes of the lost is the burn
Of thinking of how much a soul can unlearn.

(c) May 13, 2025   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved