The pit in my stomach When in a game of hide and seek I suddenly discovered no one could find me The short sharp instant Of asphyxiation during my very first dive When I thought I was literally dead in that water The ecstatic cartwheels My heart turned with its unbridled joy When I proposed and she said yes with her eyes The jet plane feeling When for the very first time I sped my car up onto an Interstate’s on-ramp The subatomic smallness That shrank me as I stood on the rim Of the Grand Canyon and looked down its boundless abyss The satiated silence Of a moonlit walk when nothing was said Yet everything was understood by our two clasped hands The wave of breathless grief That left me shaking like an aspen in a winter wind When I watched him draw a breath and never let it out again Memories time cannot erase I often reach for them in my little treasure chest What we have is only what we remember, as a great poet once said