A Place Remembered

 

Late summer out on the plains near Mornant, a secluded village.  Just a little ways before arriving there, the trail forks, the southside of which leads to an open pasture with an enormous knotty oak that spreads its shade over half.  Here stray cattle hide from the sun.  Before this, there is a centuries old stone cross, a meeting point which directed pilgrims long ago to destinations that no longer exist.  Between this stone cross and that old knotty oak is a path of no particular interest, but there is almost a mystical aura that sits over all of it, not for what it is, but what I remember it being.  Funny how the present memory always takes precedence over the past event.  Good times are never so good as when remembered, and bad times never so awful as they seemed.  Sweetness lies in loss, but what is lost, if we just remember, never existed in the heart that holds it now.

Douglas Thornton