Memory

Memory is an old Mexican woman

sweeping her yard with a broom.

She has grown even smaller now,

residing at that vanishing point

decades after one dies,

but at some times, given

the right conditions—

an ordinary dream, or practically

anything in particular—

she absolutely looms,

assuming the stature

she had in the neighborhood.

This was the Great Valley,

and we had swept in

to do the grooming.

We were on the move, tending

what was essentially

someone else's garden.

Memory's yard was all that

in miniature, in microcosm:

rivers for irrigation,

certain plants, certain trees

ascertained by season.

Without formal acknowledgment,

she was most certainly

the head of a community, American.

Memory had been there forever.

We settled in around her;

we brought the electricity

of blues and baptized gospel,

ancient adaptations of icons,

spices, teas, fireworks, trestles,

newly acquired techniques

of conflict and healing, common

concepts of collective survival. . .

Memory was there all the while.

Her house, her shed, her skin,

were all the same— weathered—

and she didn't do anything, especially,

except hum as she moved;

Memory, in essence, was unmemorable.

Yet, ask any of us who have long since left,

who have all but forgotten that adulterated place

paved over and parceled out by the powers that be,

and what we remember, without even choosing to,

is an old woman humming, sweeping, smoothing her yard: Memory.

Source: Legends from Camp (Coffee House Press, 1993)