“I tell what I literally was yesterday, and I
try to explain to myself how I got here.”
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
I wonder what I am waiting on now;
it doesn’t matter who I think I am,
I’ve come to realize I never knew.
Parameters constructed from the past
limit choice to predestination’s ice,
a cold binary dream of what was.
Memory clings to now with serrated
claws extracted only after decades
of leeching blood from impoverished soil.
We find happiness where we are able,
a cardinal’s quick flutter on a branch
before worry fingers us back to ground.
What was said and left undone remains
within memory’s bloodless self-absorption.
(July 24, 2014)
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