If Healing is Forgetting: Five Poems

1.

 

Not all remembrance is a gift

some wounds are as fresh as the silence

of outdated newspapers

to remember them is to go back to a place

where there is no welcome

where a dog of regret viciously guards

the gate

 

Tonight

the moonlight is crashing through the windows

breaking our gaze into pieces

and the stars forget what their own light means

just being there

dazzling in the sanctuary of thereness

I hear the sleepers dream of unsaid things

lovers in their insomnia utter senseless things

one by one the houses’ lights recede into the night’s loss

and the last passing car disappears at the bend of the road

 

forgetting accompanies us weightless and proud

embracing us apart

breaking us whole

ripening us like a fruit ready to be plucked

by gravity

by the nameless arms whose welcome we longed for

and the darkness collects inside us

outside us into a kind of consolation

as calm and warm as an unanswered prayer or as forgetting

​

2.

 

In the peace of this winter afternoon

beat your feet against the cold earth

listen

keep the immeasurable cry of your heart—standing

forgiving willing enduring—

to yourself

the deafness in other people’s ears

of your pain

for there is a hurt that cannot be uttered

it can only be touched

as some words can only be truly spoken

not with a voice

but with a brush of the lips

across the face

 

as the sunset turns into a smoky-rose feather

dwindling like a candle in a dark room

as the winds scatter your memories like sails

setting into the horizon

what cannot be touched now

can be forgiven sometime elsewhere

without you

let the birds carry your loneliness

towards the final beauty of forgetting

 

3.

 

What is forgetting?

    —  a deep dreamless sleep of a cat

    —  the perfume of abandon emitted by pine trees

    —  the quiet that attracts the nib of the pen

          to the promise of a blank page

 

what is this that makes

the air sweeter in the nostrils

cooler in the lungs

lighter in the head?

 

It is the sound

of time’s water

that empties the heart

of ash of the old songs

and fills it with

the honey and ache

of the unsung

 

4.

 

Forgetting will arrive

unannounced like a thick mist

on a quiet winter night

late

late night

when the trains unmoving

surrender their destination

when sleep finally comes over

to the heartbroken

when the river returns

the songs to your ears

when the calendar marks

yesterday with an X

and the coming days

with clear sighs

like open windows

when everything is possible

like an unexpected shooting star

you cannot brace yourself

as it comes running back to you

like a prodigal son

all that you could remember

is that it has arrived

all memories become a smear

of light

 

5.

 

Praise forgetting as it reclaims

its hard-fought homecoming at midnight

with its pockets heavy with stones

(sleepless nights

abandoned rooms

unopened doors

unsent letters

untasted wine)

 

in the darkness you will learn to unlearn

your battles and marvel at your own image

in the daylight you will kiss your shadow’s forehead

farewell its damp certainties

its dusty guilts

you will inherit the old heartbreaks

with a new language to forgive them

with the tenderness that surrounds the distant

sunlit hills