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---
title: Riptide of memory
id: riptide_memory
genre: verse
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 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.
[an angel of death]: angeltoabraham.html
[my father is caught by a riptide]: father.html
[memory]: ouroboros_memory.html
[another shipwreck]: shipwright.html
[ghost]: 100-lines.html
[stars above the mountains]: finding-the-lion.html
|
