Impressions (Poetry)

What remains after so much time has passed? —
the memory selects from stores of images
at random — broken shards picked from the dust
presented in no order and with no proof
they’re genuine — or harmless fictions I’ve made up
to fill in all the gaps...

I remember a small lizard on a wall —
glued there by the sun.

A bell tolled from the tower of a church
stood square and white against a too-blue sea.

And down the track towards me a dark man
came smiling like true love had found him there...

Just those three things — lizard, bell and man
recall for me one burning afternoon
bridge forty years between the then and now
his face, the one-note bell, the crumbling wall —
the way the lizard fixed me with its gaze
impressing that one moment held between
how it was or how it might have been.