Safekeeping - Virginia Francisco

[Larry Robinson]

Safekeeping
 
When the shadows of forgetfulness
start creeping into your garden
you know it´s time to gather
those precious fragments of memory
you don´t want to lose.
Like that poem around the Christmas table
unearthed, after forty years,
while we all witnessed the resurrection.
Not names, or addresses, or hard facts
but the soul of things.
After all, that clock on the kitchen table
unfailingly knows what time and date it is,
so why bother?
Take your time.
Forgetting is not a voracious passion
that surprises you unaware.
It moves slowly and predictably.
One inch a day,
enveloping simple, daily things
like the last time we took our pills
or where we left our glasses.
I offer custody to whatever you want to salvage,
a safekeeping space in my heart
like a library of things too valuable
to yield to oblivion.
And like a librarian I will pull out,
at your behest,
those treasures you wish to revisit.
And when the dark mist has covered everything
to turn it into a faint resemblance
of something once known
we´ll still meet, beyond the name of things.
Yes, let the blurry places
become our new playgrounds.
 
     - Virginia Francisco



"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
    - Wendell Berry