We Have All Been Here Before

 WE HAVE ALL BEEN HERE BEFORE

If only I understood how my brain works, I could give an empirical explanation of what happened when I spotted Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle in a second-hand book shop. I could describe the experience in terms of neurons firing, synapses synapsing, and other electrochemical happenings in my head. Such an explanation would not be poetic at all. Oh no. It would be quite rational and scientifical. But I don’t understand how my brain works, so I’ll have to use the language of reminiscence and nostalgia. 

There was a flash of recognition when I saw the cover with the words ‘Watermelon Pickle’ and the painting of the jar of pickles sitting on a rustic shelf. It was not a memory. It was a re-cognition, a knowing-again. I don’t remember reading the book. I don’t remember what grade I was in. Or if I read it for school or pleasure. There was just that explosive recognition. Something that was not there, was suddenly there. 

Fifty years separate me from the child who read that book. Yet I recognized the words to “How to Eat a Poem” as if I were she. In that moment, we were one: Me and she who was me before I was me.

I recognized a few other poems. Each recognition was a sudden illumination. Effortless and natural. As if I’d known all along. And how satisfying it was to find that she and I had the same taste in poetry! How comforting to know that “Gone Forever” impressed her so much that it was preserved somewhere in her gray matter for me to find. What kind of thoughts did she think that made this poem stay with her – this poem about the ephemerality of thought?  

There were also a few dimmer sparks of recognition, a few glimmers in the darkness. Small though these details are, they tell me something about the child who read this book. How poetic then, that she too read a poem that told her something about me! Though she could not have known it at the time. I will have to know for the both of us.  

“During that summer —
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was —
Watermelons ruled.”

These lines describe a nostalgia that is only an abstract concept to the young. What a perfect way to end a poetry book for children – with a poem whose full meaning is not revealed until the book is forgotten and chanced upon later. 

This is déjà vu that is true. I have been here before.