Remembered
The grass is wet where Earth has pulled water from air, like rabbits from a hat. Droplets perch on the tips of blades and glisten in the morning sun— liquid lanterns. I move slowly because it's the only way I can move today. There is no virtue in my savoring steps, this is just exhaustion— airborne at first, but I have borne it ever since. The field feels too wide to cross, untraversable as the night sky, but I trace constellations in the glittering dew and train my gaze on the infinity of stars just beyond my shuffle. The sun sits at eye level. A flock of starlings swoops between us. I hear the flutter of feathers. A few steps more, and I am walking through bird breath, through air whipped by wing beat. I inhale until I am made of birds. I wonder, how many wings carry me across the shadowed and shining expanse? How many migrations re-member in the cells of this supposed self?
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
The Prompt
My own poem was prompted by the interplay of my body’s limitations and the limitless interconnection that defines existence. To be is to inter-be. If that simple facts stirs up a poem inside you, that’s wonderful! Let it out! Poems don’t like to be pent up. If you’d like something else to go off of as a prompt, though, then here’s a single and seemingly simple word for you to play with: remember.
We are probably all well versed in the dictionary definition of remember—”to bring to mind or think of again; to retain in the memory.” In the end of my poem, I played with the word, riffing off of what seems like a plausible etymology and alternate definition—remember as the opposite of dismember. Remember as “to bring to body” or “to retain as limbs.” Disappointingly, a Google search reveals that this is not where the word remember comes from. Instead, it derives from the Latin rememorari, which means “to call to mind.” Perhaps the ‘b’ was inserted for ease of pronunciation or to conjure a crispness in our remembering that might have been clouded by the much mufflier rememer. (Though I do love the symbolism of this particular word being a palindrome!)
What does the word remember pull up for you? How does it feel to voice it as a command: “Remember!” What injunctions want to follow? How does it feel to speak it as a question: “Remember?” What words want to flow from there?
What’s you’re relationship with remembering? With long-time memory? With short-term memory? With remembering old stories in new ways? With weaving new truths into your vast trove of memories? With remembering where you put your car keys?
Do you have a specific memory that wants to speak its truth through a poem? Or a specific memory that wants to surface and be remembered in a different way?
There’s no wrong direction to go with this, friends. Follow your own curiosity. Follow the pull of your own heart. I look forward to reading your poems in the comments!
AMBER WAVES
Hey, friend.
Yeah, its been a while.
30 years or so, if anyone's counting.
Remember
how hard I danced with you,
and
how loud I laughed with you,
and
how great I sang with you?
Remember
how patiently I waited with you,
as you lay puking your guts out
on the cool bathroom floor,
waiting for your fog to lift,
so we could go do it all again?
Remember
riding all those amber waves?
Just you and me, pal.
(fuck them).
Remember
I will always miss you.
How young is the universe?
.
Of all the universes,
(are there others?)
is it as young as I am?
Is it a newborn, a fledgling?
A parent birthing its own
tiny universes?
Or does it grow without
growing old?
.
Was it born of love?
If space is a vast and
almost-perfect vacuum
that exploded from nothing
and became everything,
is that not love?
.
When it reaches its limits,
will it, too, feel a sort of pain?
Or is its constant stretching
already an unbearable ache?
Does it reverberate throughout the cosmos?
Is that why the earth
is so full of hurt?
.
In this vast and growing universe
I am nothing and everything.
.
Sometimes life feels too big,
like I am being pulled in too many directions
and I will never be enough.
Is that how the universe feels?
I think it must be, if we are all
made of the same atoms.
.
If we remember our
connection to all things,
will it make the stretching easier?
Will it hurt less?