Erin Whitmore
The Use of Water in Memory
At one point it was the knowledge
of sitting by someone whose heart you knew was better than your own.
A brother?
Who drives through mist and rain
and knows the way stars may drop on a road
and skip into the trees, melting all the time.
Now this was always recalled by the rain.
(which was marked by the blue pylon)
and the discussions
about the problems of water,
Oh, but from the sky then
one could fall into coolness
to dive in a wave and know of an arm in a car
to know of one’s eyes on the dips of land.
A while after though,
A new recollection,
when the list of books was lost.
Years of recorded reading
shot through the air, like the weeds
that afternoon, all clumped and shuddering.
But why then were these moments so formed?
There does remain a sense of water, holding all together -
That is, a water, that worked in between
making parts wholes,
congealing the moment into one
to be recorded as the start of a new list of books,
from that, which had moments ago,
exploded in that particular day’s air
like the silver side of a leaf
drying up into wafers.