---
title: Riptide of memory
genre: verse

project:
    title: Stark Raving
    css: 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 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.