Memory as Lighthouse, Memory as Bomb
They told me I would not remember
but the rootholds of the mind are rigorous.
Amnesia is not a choice, not a warranty of anesthetic,
not the brain’s sophisticated segregation
of experience deemed injurious to function.
Rather it is the story of the vessel arriving in the bay
that we cannot see because we do not know ship
but do know disturbance on the surface
and if we peer and puzzle at the water’s strange course
the craft comes into view, a miraculous assembling.
Once comprehension rives them, we cannot see
the woman’s face and the image of the vase as one.
The memory center may be flooded with the medicated
smoke that expects to still the hive, to lure
the soldiers into dereliction of duty but even so
the trip-trap footsteps of the hunched figure
ascending the 210 stairs of the lighthouse
continue their rhythm. I cannot forget
the truth revealing itself, a disturbance of flow
and then stunning materialization,
a brilliance like bombs exploding,
a white light that sears the skull and throbs
in the chemical reuptake between cells,
replicating history, insisting on full recollection.
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