Memory the Book

Memory the Book

(“Meanwhile the earth fills up with awareness of God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.” Habakkuk 2:14 [The Message])

To walk alone, the woods, the foothills,
and see the nodding leaves left on the barefoot floor
is less inspired than to be tethered to another soul
who sees the beams between the trees while you
feel the cold shade of winter’s shadow underneath them.

Though full of lessons around every bend, solitary
bests my attempts to take it all in.

So I wrote a good initial stanza, the words are lazily out of reach
for the rest. I think I gave my heart to more than one friend who
took it with them and moved out of town.

Pieces scattered, old cinder block ash, across the map,
an x and y axis of time and place. I spend too many days alone
to write well anymore.

I make up forests from my memory, old trees waking
I once tried to photograph trunk to canopy before my father told me
it would never work, taking pictures that way. I never tried again.

I’ve made too many mistakes to trust myself
to write from my heart anymore. Laughter forsook me
with the last piece of trust placed in the hands of a man
who cried with me at lunch. His wife of youth gone
too soon cancer. Owing to my weaknesses shared
(too soon as well) the friend couldn’t help but
clumsy my soul. It wasn’t his fault, we mostly
trample like fall our opportunities.

To walk alone in the woods, the foothills
unshared with another, soul to soul, is an
ingrown blindness; though swimming in
a Sea of Glory, we depart and dry.
Divide the ramble, eyes doubled four,
is a holy panorama; sloshing in the
Sea of Glory, more wet and head to toe,

Whether smile or cry, the day is meaning
and memory the book to read happiness by.