remember, body

I tell my body to remember how
I once was loved
upon the heated bed
in which that golden one and I
had spent October nights.
 
I tell my eyes to take in once again
the plain glow of unbridling desire
that then was there  
within the way that she,
as if astonished,
gazed at me
 
my ears to hear the tremble  
and the adoration  
in her voice.
 
So I might feel  I did not lead,
or let myself be led,
into an empty failure of a life
 
But all these things belong now
to the past,
that distant country that my Judas flesh
has scorned me from
as I inside the shadow creeping of  
the slow succession of my numbered days
become, with dire debilitating age, one numb,
and memories, instead of bringing joy
into my life
present themselves
as harrowings.