Memory can grow a shell
around the most delicate flower:
the cottage that was for so long
a place for children to discover
the scent of grass, the kiss of leaves,
the lyrics of water and sand and
little shells, and shape and hot
and cool and rain and shade
and euchre and hiding in the woods
in building tree forts and learning to swim
and paddle and row and steer—
all this can become engraved
in the steely fabric of memory
until it anchors us in the past.
But there is a wind that blows
from the setting sun,
from the lips, the brows
of the sons and daughters
when they return after
the old ones have finished,
to pry into the hardened adamantium
and breathe fresh blossoms
that will begin the new paradise.
