Why I Write

I used to

 

write to remember

as if

by putting words on paper

I could at some point in the

future reconstitute flesh, heat, light

like adding water to orange juice concentrate

or thawing out an embryo. But

I found

I could often recognize

only the words written about a thing

with no more depth than the typeface

on an old-fashioned business card.

I could not remember the thing itself.

Certainly not the deep beneath the words.

Then

 

for a while I wrote to chronicle,

with spare and lean prose

drawing fine-line portraits of what

I had seen and heard

with the India ink of consonant and vowel.

But as

my eyes grow dim and

motes swim across my vision

like diaphanous fairies in the slanting

evening light through the blinds,

as the voice of a friend and the

burble of a mountain brook

begin to sound disturbingly similar

to my failing ears, I find that it seems

pointless

to write of things

which my senses will tell me are not so.

So now

 

I write not what I remember,

or see, or hear.

Now

 

I write

to be

at least for a moment

in the deepest part of me

   the prophecy in a sun breaking over the sea

   the love in the salty tasting skin of her neck

   the persistence of a full moon scudding between clouds

   the eloquence of a tear rolling down a young boy’s face

No longer

 

depending on my synapses,

my eyes, my ears

victims of a life lived

with a continuous diminuendo.

WS