I am building a memory garden
among the tamarind trees.
Every ephemeral recollection I
fuse and freeze in stem and leaf.
Inlaid in tamarind trunk
are kisses from a fading lover.
She cannot bear to hear me speak.
And I would build a memory garden
for I hear her voice
in every
dream.
In the garden is a grotto,
holding deepest gleams,
growing with the stones and
sky erodes in silent
tendrils through the deep.
A warmth of sancuary where
I rest my closest visions.
I am haunted, every other night,
by tellings to inscribe
on blade of grass and
fallen fruit.
In elm I place my fear.
It stretches below and above
and shakes the soil at every
twist of its noble head.
In oak I place my ardour,
feeling as it moves it
drags the ocean through my veins.
In maple place my anger
and as is sighs I know it
calls tornados from their source.
When the owl perched
back upon the tamarind branch,
it scattered stars;
it unsettled the dust of planets.
I am pouring out my memories,
a libation to soak the ground.
What will grow from these, I do not know.
I pray wisdom, but
I set my memories in casting stones.