To a Spurious Memory

I sit, to pick the memory apart –
it stares at me with a wrinkled heart:
yellow-strawed lofts and green summer scents
attack my withered countenance.
A pair of smiling faces, images of bliss
unfold out of a hike, a ride, a mother’s kiss.
I hear a sound, a river’s gurgling song –
children’s voices laughing pleasantly along.
Like color and taste, I have no firm measure
of comparing this vision of distant pleasure
with reality. I must admit adorned perception
a stage of unacknowledged self-conception,
and store the memory in a mindful place
that only I can touch, and taste.