A Field Guide to Memory - fran claggett-holland

[Larry Robinson]

A Field Guide to Memory

     I The Birdwoman 

No one else is alive
	who remembers.
The future in the poem
	is not beholden to its past.

Carefully I fill in the dates in April
	only one birthday there
but March was busy with birthdays
	and doctors

It is March and the poinsettia’s red leaves
	are still hanging, creating a future
that may outlast 
	the calendar.

Departures from the ordinary
	the familiar, the prosaic, art
as technique, predictable as neurons
	in the hippocampus

Move in the direction of tropes
	undefined miracles, secrets, myths
Notice the visible quality of silence
	drawing the line over the unsaid.

End with the image, don’t explain.
	The birdwoman 
stands by the window
dreaming in cloud cover.


			
	II Birdwoman returns

				stands at the window
				waiting
No, she hears, go to the door,
open it.
Far in the distance
 flash of movement
then
				stillness
					    silence.
She turns 	
sees in the window
what lives in the silence
 			what was always there
beside her--
his relentless devotion
				
	- fran claggett-holland
			for her saluki Madgik,
    	 August 1, 2009 - August 5, 2022