start with a blank sheet of paper,
virtual or otherwise.  it’s the paper
that writes the poem, the mind
abhors a vacuum–my boyfriend
used to say that.

you might find yourself writing
a memory or a memory of a memory
that remembered itself to you from another.
perhaps it was self-deprecating, or innocent,
or feigning innocence.

it is not always comfortable, but
there’s this blank sheet of paper,
virtual or otherwise, and a kind of
vague idea of what you want it to say
and the first memory in turn forgets itself

so that in the end you are not sure
what you really remember or what
you have forgotten.  still, there is an image
of water weeds trapping dragonflies
like liquid glass,

even as you drive away there is a
lone figure dressed in white.  she
is bending over the ground, looking
at something lost in the glare from the sun
against the peach colored sky

fading into irrelevance,
part of a fable people only tell
to remember themselves.
her eyes told other stories, ones
no one wanted to know

and somewhere on the page,
the blank sheet of paper, virtual or otherwise,
the wind wraps itself around
a stucco chimney

swirling the smoke skyward