When you die

people will talk you up

fatten your totem pole into fierce faces

of defiance

because you were strong, because your blood carried

the weight of your legacy and your ancestors

when you die

I will wear your ring on my finger if I am still around

and every sunset will pull the moon down

her mauve redolence

aching in my chest

to hold you against me

for when you die

memory will become a marriage

between us, and the ether

I will live in the past ever more so

recalling the days we spent

living our life in each other’s gastropods 

it is my belief we carry within us

the seeds of ancestors and loved ones

blood and violets, oshibana in focus

and each step we make on this earth

we walk alongside the invisible ones

who hold us up when the going gets tough

recently, the going has been very tough and I have

beseeched the stoicism of those who are not here

to see me through

I don’t have their solidity, you know

nor their earnest lust for life

at times I think a brawny wind could

carry me off

I have at best, one foot on the ground

the other is hurtling in a rêver

a dream of less grief, less pain

where we can unfurrow our sails

and drift on burnished water

I was asked not long ago

what I most wanted out of life

and it seemed such a banal question

when struggling to survive

but really that’s the point isn’t it?

To keep putting one foot in front of the other

staring at the setting sun as it blooms

fattened orb of life

just as capable of destroying

a metaphor surely …

for our riddled

minds

(homage to Nomadland)

11 Replies to “What’s is remembered, lives.”

  1. I wonderful line …. I will live in the past ever more so
    recalling the days we spent
    living our life in each other’s gastropods …. among others, the is a wonderful piece of writing on life lived, love and present. ❣️

  2. staring at the setting sun as it blooms

    fattened orb of life

    I’ve noticed that you often place your killer lines towards the end of your poems. So we remember them.

  3. “Nay if even in the house of Hades the dead forget their dead, yet will I even there be mindful of my dear comrade.” [Achilles]
    ― Homer, The Iliad

  4. I call to my ancestors too.. I know they survived so much.. during the tough times it seems we have to look to transpersonal sources…. I heard about the melting icecaps today.. it made me realize that on some level our beings sense all of this.. known intellectually or unknown..

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