BEFORE I FORGET

Loss of memory short-term —
a boon in disguise!
Attention then falls
on what’s in the eyes.

Recollection, remembrance
and their coeval, regret,
make up together
the other great threat.

Wisdom if it comes
means cutting the cord.
Breaking with memories
brings as well the reward

of recognition
won at long last
that the things of youth
are things of the past.

***

I am a bad Buddhist, actually not a Buddhist at all. But if a hypothetical sophomore were obliged to decorticate this poem for a classroom exercise, he or she would want to begin or at least finish with the observation that its author had been influenced by Zen. There is also that haunting passage in 1 Corinthians, 11:13, here in the King James: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Hold still, I know it hurts
Much more than I can judge.
You live on the very edge,
Your guts exert a gravity
You begrudge.

Hold still, I know it hurts
When once again he skirts
The pith with verbiage.
He too lives on a ledge,
His arguments integuments,
Scaffolding where he can lodge.

Hold still, I know it hurts.
Precariousness imparts
Poignancy to rage.
We all must face the edge
When nakedness thwarts
And confines us in its cage.

Hold still, I know it hurts.
You live on the very edge.
Your room has walls of light.

***
This is one of several poems spun off the experience of living for the first time in a high-rise, this in the winter of 1969, freshly arrived on the Canadian prairies. I was a very difficult lover to have and so wreaked more damage than necessary upon those unfortunate enough to be attracted to me. I did have a sense of the suffering I inflicted, as can be read in these lines.

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