The Remembering

I found the first 3 lines of this poem written on a scrap from my purse this afternoon. I think I jotted it down on the subway when we were in London. So I sent the kids down the street for ice cream and wrote the rest this evening. I don't know. It is what it is, I guess.

The Remembering

It is the remembering that makes it so

The imprint of pleasures once tasted and known

That cannot be steamed from the folds

The prickly, sickly sweetness of one

Who cannot stop being remembered

Being turned over like a sea-polished stone

Until an unseen depression lies in its heart

Begging to be unconsciously smoothed, soothed

It is the remembering that makes it so

The closing of eyes, the flutter of cool

The sting of a fingertip drawn back from a flame

The knowing, once known, cannot be unknown

The circuit once routed cannot stop firing

The sleep that stills and drifts and dreams

Cannot be approached, the pillow too warm

The air too still, too stale

It is the remembering that makes it so

The smell of a kitchen, a vanity, of wood, of fumes

The fossil of a memory lying within the nostrils,

Clinging to the membranes long since cleansed

By cold, and damp heat, by sea spray and autumn

But still there in a moment, a transport so rapid

So vivid, persistent, startlingly so

Then brushed away, but flashed into vision

It is the remembering that makes it so

That eases and teases and ruts away at the brain

That at once remembered cleaves to, and cleaves

Struggles and strains and binds all periphery

That blocks out the lumen and presses the chest

The afterthought, re-thinking, re-reading, re-writing

Of a moment that makes it more than so

And less than so, and remaining still

But,

It is the remembering that makes it so

That blocks out the tenebrous and illuminates the ether

The lovely heaviness of a moment, honeyed with halcyon light

Complete in promise, undiminished by its afterthought

It’s location hidden, in a smile, in a common place

Drawing in Love as ocean waves, and tides, and floods

At once earthly, at once divine

Drifting and pulling as a boat tethered at sea