voices in the trees

Memory

Walk around the corner; what do you see?
you expect everything will look
as it has ~ or worse ~ or better yet
But you are wrong.

Once you go around, nothing
will be the same.
The memories in the carryon,
all subtly altered, but
you won’t know that,
you won’t see how you
have changed.

But if you could…and you can’t… it’s only whimsy…
return to the seconds
before you left,
they would exclaim
and maybe not even recognize
you,
although
you
have come back
from the dead to tell them
something
but you can’t
remember
what it is

The hints we have
of what is
waiting for us,
faint wrinkles, warnings,
If we live, we will look like this.

We see in a mirror
darkly, but when we see
face to face,
everything we have known
will be erased by
blinding light, scorching out
our brains.

That is why some can’t move on.
they’ve guessed
what will be lost,
preferring grey mists
of neither nor,
and in between,
to the purging fire,
present time,
another century, another millennium.
But then,
who will carry memory, tell the tales?

Only whales and trees can be trusted with history.
when we have killed them all,
so our grasp of the distant past,
the blaze of stars, the surge of natal sea.
but maybe, finally,
we will be born in sunlight,
Or into the caress of night,
instead of this dim twilight
where we hover, willing to be
neither form nor apparition.

Maybe finally,
the long deep breath,
plunging down
the slide into
life.

edited 2014