The Tree of Forgetting

If death were a still thing, it would be

a tree like this, its winter arms caught

in the gesture of frenzy, like a widow

who tears apart her funeral garment

to wear the look of the heart’s refusals.

Me, I wear black. As does my family.

The color of forgetting is the color

of respect, of memory and the night ahead.

I wear something just formal enough

to honor those I knew and do not know.

I usher the weak among us through the door.

If death were a tree, it would be the lung

of a man when it goes still a moment.

Listen, he says. It’s out there, the pulse

he alone can hear, the heartbeat inside

the pillow he warms, in gratitude, in dread.

~

Tonight I keep listening to Ginastera,

a deep blue poem set deeper into song.

The Tree of Forgetting. Tonight

I see him lean into his baby grand,

as the world leans closer to disaster.

1938. Take a walk in your sleep,

and you just might find your way there,

listening for the part of you that listens,

for the stone that fades into the well.

If there is an answer at the bottom,

a mushroom splash, a cloud, I forget.

If there’s a song down there, I am waiting.

~

~

~

To try to forget is the dream’s reason

to remember. Try to imagine a night

without reasons to leave a day behind.

I have a good friend I keep forgetting,

the way memory must. Like love. It selects.

Like us. It burns. It keeps us company.

Perhaps Ginastera understood

the roots of the tree of forgetting

are those of music. We sing to remember

and forget, to be, in song, two people.

If stillness could be musical, it would

be a tree like this. It would be

the form of remembrance. Truth is,

music is no argument, though those

in need of reasons walk the path of it,

the way a singer walks into her music,

in which, to hear it, she must be silent.

~