Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Halfway Down

MEME EXPRESS
jogs my memory today with the topic
'TUNE'

The illustration is pure 'Christopher Robin', of course, as is my title, but it is all part of that same childhood dreamworld. It fits perfectly.

HALFWAY DOWN

Suddenly, I hear a tune, and then the frisson starts!
How is it that a simple song can fribulate our hearts;
That a certain special melody played in that certain style
Can send a pleasant shiver up my spine and make me smile;
Can make me stop, there, in my tracks, to live again times gone,
Sometimes a time so long ago it's rarely looked back upon?
Take 'Lullaby of Broadway'. I was only about four
And life was a strange, mysterious thing with all of it in store.
And, as I sat there on the stairs, I heard the radio!
It was a strange new-fangled thing. (This was very long ago!)
The words were such a puzzle! They didn't make much sense!
A lullaby in the morning? Bewilderment immense!
And, somehow, as I puzzled, the tune got in my mind,
And all of that comes back to me in detail, I now find.
One chord and I am back there, a little child again,
Gazing between the bannisters, hearing that refrain.
And puzzling and puzzling and trying to get it right
And wondering and wondering, up there at a great height.
And now that I'm merely writing of that moment in the past
I feel the same old magic!
How good that it can last!

Another glimpse of childhood here:


4 comments:

California Girl said...

nice capture of your memory.

the cartoon reminds me of my children at the age of sitting up and barely walking as they came bumping down the stairs on their bums. cutest thing I've ever seen.

pretty amazing you remember that song at such an early age. I've heard long term memory improves with age and short term memory does not. odd.

Unknown said...

It's true: a song can stay with us for longer than we can ever imagine, ... or rather, a song can take us back further in time to a place that we all but forgot.

LA Nickers said...

Love it.

"Lullabye of Broadway" - 42nd Street

Christopher Robin

What a concept!

Kat said...

Poem brings forth well the link between Music, time and mind. It's so true.