"I'm sure (my memory) only works one way;" Alice remarked. "I can't remember things before they happen."
"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." the Queen remarked.
—Lewis Carroll
The same wind that tells you everything at once unstitches your memory. You try to write faster than the thread is pulled.
—W.S. Merwin
And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves — only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.
—Ranier Maria Rilke
Layers Of Memory
You unfold in layers like the sheet, blanket
and comforter, wrapped around me.
You, a memory, alive, from not long ago.
Why now do you rise up from your nothingness
to awaken in my mind, this body asleep?
I would have remembered you in
a time more suited to your grandeur.
You, the pinnacle, the reference point,
the northern most star in a constellation of stars,
now come to me in our bed where touch,
sex and love were so selflessly given and received.
You, a memory, are verification of my life...
One now besieged by the familiar, the commonplace.
One now left with extraordinary amounts of time
to contemplate you, still now, only a memory,
in this dream of what might have been.
Photo Credit: Ann Reed, Banff Sky, 2007 Digital Photo, 9x12.