Memory

I do not claim to be a poet, but this is a poem that I wrote as answer to a poet's question to me about seeing in aged faces connections to family past and future. It seemed more appropriate than to compose a, likely to be muddled, prose response. The characters in the poem are composite figures based on actual persons that I know. The phrase "gesturing the sign" is a reference to American Sign Language.

You need no paper,
no photo, no recording
to prove the truth of yesterday.
The map of your face remembers
the time of my birth;
and when I first laughed at your smile;
and how I leaped
to your arms
before I could speak;
and your mirth when I touched
the morning stubble on your cheek,
then turned away,
gesturing the sign, dirty,
my small fingers waving
under my chin.

The mirror of your eyes
remind me to myself.
Without speech, they recall
how you held me up before
the living room mirror,
to let me see
us as we were.
You named to me
the people who loved me.
We looked at each other
reflecting morning light,
and you murmured to us:
Remember.

Someday, I will embrace
all that I have seen
and trace, like the sun,
with fingers of light
the curving face of time—
see how all places that we knew
have been but shared memories
all along.
I will look for you in memory,
where you too can find me.
We will laugh over
what we remember
and what we forgot,
and then:
Make new memories—
to grow up in again,
to live in again
for ever.

The Opened Heart. Oil paint drawing on paper.

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