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 laying 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