How the Past Came to Be Seen as a Broken Pop Bottle

The color of stones you might have imagined.
The color of eyes you dream about.
The Konigsee in childhood might have seemed
this green, the waters of the Isar,
above the salt mines, running off from winter
snow. A spring morning through thick mist.
A single dew drop on a green leaf.

Fractured this way, there might have been
a dozen stones in a dozen rivers,
a single morning seen through a thousand
drops of rain, a hundred seas
in every eye of glass.

Sharp as vision perfect in childhood,
things fade, crumble, splinter
into lenses too small to hold a proper
perspective, shed light on what lies
beneath it. Only memory never fades,
never loses its perfect shape of bottle, water,
stone skipping like birds trembling off the surface.