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+---
+title: Riptide of memory
+genre: verse
+
+id: riptide_memory
+toc: "Riptide of memory"
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    class: stark
+    order: 16
+    next:
+    - title: About the author
+      link: about-the-author
+    - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
+      link: sixteenth-chapel
+    prev:
+    - title: Something about all music being performances of _4′33″_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
+      link: music-433
+    - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
+      link: i-think-its-you
+...
+
+| Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory.
+| The air up here is thin, but the wind blows harder
+| than anywhere else I know.  It threatens to rip
+| my body away, like [an angel of death][], to the stars.
+
+| In Arizona, I thought I would forget the rain,
+| forget its sound on a roof like a hard wind, forget
+| its smell like a far away ocean.  Luckily for me
+| it rains here.  Luckily, because I forget too easily.
+
+| In a dream, [my father is caught by a riptide][] off-shore.
+| He's pulled far out, far enough that the shoreline's
+| a line in his [memory][] on the horizon.  I can see him
+| swimming, hand over hand, pulling his small weight
+
+| back to land.  I see him as [another shipwreck][] victim,
+| coughing sand and seawater, beard woven with seaweed.
+| I see him lying there a long time.  I see all this
+| as he tells me the story, years later, the riptide
+
+| only a [ghost][] in his memory, I only a child falling
+| asleep.  My mother's making mayonnaise rolls
+| in the kitchen, a recipe I'll send for years later,
+| in Arizona, in the monsoon season, when my thirst
+
+| pulls me back home, my memory's lonesome twinkle
+| like [stars above the mountains][].  I'll send for it
+| and try to make them, but in the thin air they'll
+| crumble into dust like desert air, like a memory.
+
+[an angel of death]: angeltoabraham.html
+[my father is caught by a riptide]: father.html
+[memory]: ouroboros_memory.html
+[another shipwreck]: shipwright.html
+[ghost]: one-hundred-lines.html
+[stars above the mountains]: finding-the-lion.html