This poem was written by Dave Griswold, a Seattle lawyer.
Here is his preface: It seems simple enough: memory is something happening now, a very current thought about things past. So it was a surprise to realize I was often getting it backward, making the past real and the memory ephemeral. People seem to do that with some frequency, if our common expressions are any indicator. I suppose the inversion makes sense in a way because the only reality we have is what we experience through our cognitive apparatus. I don't want to call it our brains because it is likely more than that. But that's just philosophy anyway. We can be forgiven for mistaking our memories for the real thing, whatever that was. To be in the moment is to experience each fragment of the moment and all of its layers of meaning, both the immediate sensations and the experienced presence of the past. To do that is to be alive. To smile about, however whimsically, it is to be human.
Bridge
“My memory was good this time”
But we don’t say that, not when
We visit after long absence a place
Formative and cherished, that once
Held us fast between births.
We put the recollection first
We give regency to our memory
Closer and more real to us now
Than these hard stones. We say:
“It is exactly as I remember.”
And why not? This moment
For all its complete beauty is but
One and once and then it’s gone.
Memory holds it, and others too
And returns them each in time.
Memory holds, not just this light
But the hard light of summer
Glinting off the surface of water
Casting hard clear shadows there,
Under the broadleaf maple.
Memory holds the soft brown
Light of autumn filtered low
And cool through the trees,
When her body sighed its yes
To the question, unspoken.
So it is with the odors of place
Musty or floral, subtle or strong
Returning to our thoughts
But not our senses, really, not
Here in this moment you stand.
In memory all the senses dance
Hold hands in a ring, joined
By “light” or “taste” or “touch”
Each singing in turn its part
In its own clear strong voice.
Like the time you stood still,
Barefoot in the tall green grass
Head in the late summer sun
A bridge from earth to sky
And felt the universe cross.
Dave Griswold 2009
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