Poem by Linde Brocato

MEMORANDUM

Re: The thing that must be remembered
Date: September 11, 2001

Poetry wants to be written
it’s there in the web of things
the veins in the leaf
the metal frame
it will out, like a story
which wants to be told
set loose

Poetry works to be written
it hums within the day
energy waiting to be transformed
kinetic to potential
rhyme lifted into steel
stored stone by stone
that waits and sings

Those stones sing and wait
even if the wait ends in a fall
transformed again
doors and windows, bodies and stones
unbuilding themselves
steel unframed and flying

Then poetry aches to be written
tumbling stone and shard
uncounted things, uncountable pages
corresponding to the course of life
sing and sigh and sift to the ground
Things that must be remembered
things that must be done
because lives must be remembered
and deaths

Poetry wants to be written
Even in the black ink of loss
even that dark song
is there beneath the integral web
of things

(March 2002)