(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)
Remember Memory
The water, turning over on itself, the shifting of a formless mass, swirling in and against itself, and refusing
to cease is safe, between the embrace of the arms that hold it dear, and know the folds, and all within by name, and how to bend
the resistance at the edges, and pull the waves on the receding tide into the deepest ocean’s heart. When the ear’s sense
can finally hear the sound, the harmony, then truth will enter in the hollowed space and take a firm hold, deep where it belongs,
where it can grow. The plane beyond the shore is restless and will never sleep as long as the pockmarked moon forces it to keep
wrestling with the land. Love cannot rest in the sleepless thrashing waves. Remember, the strong momentum of the sea must stop
eventually—when the spinning earth rests, When the moon drifts away, and when the sun begins to swell up red—but until then,
on the darkest shore that strikes land, forget the words. Remember the revolutions of reality’s struggle. Remember
the sounds that lined the edges in the dark, the soft returning and the withdrawing of the slow waves at night and the way they
can drag a pebble out to sea and drown it in itself. Forget the words spoken. Forgive the lies. Forget the truth and listen
to the sounds dragging in the waves. Forget that waves have washed the shore before. Forget the sound remembered. Listen to the sound.
For only the sound can tell what is there, and only what is there can uncover what is not, and separate memory.