an elegy - the puzzle of what is remembered and what is forgotten |
You died the day before you were to leave on the trip you had been saving up three years for I was there through coupon clippings and browsing brochure after brochure and wrapping up the pennies in the bottomless jar Finally you settled on a sunny spot that wouldn’t fit your wardrobe of black on black or be too kind to your flaxen skin so suited to cold clime Yet you put your money down because you said this trip was for reinvention and swore if there was enough left over you were never ever coming back (Going away you said was to find again that center you somehow lost and a dream that lies somewhere over an ocean In a sunken chest or a broken rock once the foundation of a temple where a fire burned constantly) But your body and time were preparing you for another journey whose end none of us are sure or if it even begins Now I have a still-folded itinerary and an empty photo-album waiting to be filled with your vacation And stories about the mementos you left behind and the calico for me to remember you by And packed suitcases which I guard like hell’s three-headed dog so the world will have to get through me to get to you (All I could do was let you go and wait for your return with pictures I hoped could record your changes faithfully and strangely colored money you’d forgotten was lodged in some sock or other) When you died I promised to take that trip in your place hoping to see with your eyes with your hands rebuild the ruins Left by civilizations on top of which other peoples of other times try to reconstruct like Broadway sets semblances of the past This is the history of death which nothing precedes but becomes a memory buried in the molten core of an undiscovered earth Not particularly wanting to be excavated or captured to be stored in some museum and chipped at by cruel instruments That wipe the face of hard-earned dirt deciphering symbols and myths stand-ins for what can never reveal the spirit of the truth Now you can be certain of what is in that heart you sought to shake hands with or kiss on the cheek like an old friend For so long almost running into it in the throng waiting for the bus of understanding knee-deep in blood and prayer Answers that can only be felt not the solving of a mystery but the vision like a love that comes to you |