All of it

What remains of memory, wisps of

            Smoke drifting lazily toward the ceiling, escaping

                        Out an open window at dusk,

            Red glow of sunset diminished,

                        Gloom overtaking the day.

It rained earlier as storms moved through,

                                    Thunder shaking the walls,

            But once passed the sun returned, steam

                        Rose from wet pavement, like reprieve,

                                    Like parole,

We shared a lifeguard stand and a bottle of red wine

            On Dowse’s Beach, watching

                        Moonrise over Nantucket Sound, it

            Was all so quiet, just us and the wash of waves on sand,

                        Hand in hand,

Later, when we walked over the bridge leading home,

                                    Astonished by flashing luminescence of jellyfish

                        Streaming into a saltwater bay,

            Carried along by the incoming tide,

                                    Marveling at the mysteries of life, and light,

                        Of chance, and fate.

It was a long time ago, life was long ago and

                                                Laughter ages ago, memories of

                        That simple touch,

So we pointed our car west,

                                    Exploring the American continent,

         Speeding toward sunset, toward darkness, across mountain and plain,

                                                Bound for new horizons, new memories,

Eating curry fries in a rooftop bar,

            Storms sweeping across the valley,

                                                Until driven inside by the sudden proximity

                                    Of lightning strikes, or

                        Drinking old fashions in a steakhouse in Buffalo,

                                                Or a soulful Smokey Robinson concert on Valentine’s Day

                             In a crowded Portland hall, last concert before shut-down,

Or the Youngbloods at the field house, hippies dancing at the back

                                    Of the auditorium,

            From a canoe trip trailing a bottle of Beaujolais from the stern

                                                In cold river water

To a kayak ride across a windswept pond

Or a deep-sea cruise to spot a whale, no great whites appeared,

                                                            What remains,

                                    Of a midnight swim in a pool in Albuquerque,

                                              Or Barstow, we were on the move, a lifetime ago,

What remains, the drift of lingering memories

            No one else cares about, not of a lifetime ago, the

                        Jarring juxtaposition of seeing Kubrick’s Strangelove

            At the theater on Pease Air Force Base, a new release, went

                                    With my best friend and his parents

                                                A rare treat, and drove

             Along the hangers, and the bombers, and I watched all summer

                                    Jets streaming overhead, splitting the great blue sky

                                                            With contrails, headed south, I thought,

            To blow Washington to smithereens, certainly

                                    The end, it was always going to be not exactly right,

                                                The Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis,

                                                                        Kennedy gunned down,

                                                                                    Never going to be right,

                                                            I and the world are getting older, tired,

                                                Mired in problems that look insurmountable,

                                    And mulling over memories,

                                                                        Effusive, unstoppable, persistent,

                                                            Available,

Smoke drifting to the ceiling,

                                                            Escaping through a window left ajar,

When we met, the sunlight in the hallway, the green paint of your locker,

The flowers in your eyes, you radiated, filled me with light and longing,

You smiled and a journey began,

                                                            Building a lifetime of memories, so

                               Many we share, so many we don’t,

                                                            The whisper of ancestors, path of family

                                          And history, the genetic trail that brought us here,

                                    Clinging together and trying to make sense

                                                Of a world we no longer belong to,

A country unrecognizable,

unable to grapple with a

                        Fundamental, existential threat,

endangering our children

            And grandchildren, the life of the

                        Planet itself, with so little comfort, isolate

                                    To survive, and consider what remains,

                                                            With so much taken away,

                                                Freedom was always illusion,

                                                                        Democracy a lie, ideas

                                    That didn’t hold up under scrutiny,

the fix was always in,

            Bobby was always going to be lying on the cold tiles

                        Of the pantry floor at the Ambassador, Nixon

                                    Always waiting in the wings,

                                It’s no wonder we’re ready to flush the whole thing away,

                                                            And divide what remains

                                                                        Among the survivors,

I’m finding contentment in memories,

                                       Comfort in what remains, closeness in partnership,

                                    Encouragement in love,

            The leaves have fully fallen

                        From the bigleaf maple and oak,

                                                I raked them up this morning

                                    And brought them to the curb,

                                                The air soft and damp and cool,

                                        The rains have come, incessantly cloudy days

                        Give way to moonless brooding nights,

                                    The heavy yoke of living

                              In this declining world, which showed such promise

Not too long ago, to now,

Stumbling at such a critical time,

Taking blind steps backwards, regressive

                                                                        Failure, is it fear or malice,

                             Or greed, or ignorance, unwillingness to move forward,

                                    To face our most uncertain future as a tribe

                                                            Unified, impossible,

In the darkness I recognize mortality, grateful

                        To have built memories in a world with a better perception

                                    Of future, what remains,

When we walked through the crowded streets of Montmartre

                In the sunshine, or Central Park, tulips and cherry blossom

Blooming, Harvard Square in the snow, glittering clear moments of a history

                        Shared, the simple yearning of lovers, wisps disappearing

                                    Out an open window, illusory in a world

                                                 Being torn asunder by a complicated machine,

                                                Equal parts passion and rage,

                                                            Blundering on the precipice,

Winter’s night, a cold wind from the east

            Shuttling the blistered sky, in the mountains it’ll snow,

                                                            A few months ago, nearly a year,

                 I published a book of poems, and sent one to my long-estranged

                                    Baby sister, and one of the poems was of family,

                                                            The extended family of my youth,

Grand mother and father, aunts, uncles, and cousins,

                                    Little sister was yearning for more information, and it

            Occurred to me tonight, that I’ll be of the last generation

                        To remember them, as breathing living people,

                                    Not just pictures seldom, if ever, seen

                                                In a dusty album no one ever looks at

                                                            In a box in the attic,  

The next generation won’t hear

            Bill’s laughter fill a room, or know his enjoyment of a

                        Game of croquet, that unusual side-ways stance he used

            To favor a bad back, hand on one knee, won’t know Theresa’s

                                Endless Irish stories of friends and family, her sly humor,

                                    Or dad’s father Sam, taciturn, old New England farmer,

His striking resemblance to General Douglas MacArthur, right down

                       To the wire-rimmed glasses and the smell of his corncob pipe,

Their frail memory stops here, except 

Genetic contribution, unbroken river,

So I want to tell little sister

                                    Everything I know, remember, even dimly recall,

                                                          Unimportant, really, just personal history

                                                I’m unwilling to forget, ancestors remembered,

                                                            What remains, what stays,

                        And what drifts away through an open window, into

                                    The night, on a cold wind from the east,

Diminishing, as I am diminished,

            Faded with fading memory,

                                                Lost time, friends and family evaporated

                        Into thin air,

            And all I can say is good-bye, goodbye,

                                    Gone, relieved from this chaotic world,

It serves little purpose to remain so mired

                                    In the past, even at sunset, even in winter,

                        But we are alone, and we are heartbroken,

            And living in a time when it all is slipping away, everything

                                                We’ve ever known, the truth we have lived,

                        In a descending spiral, a dying democracy at war with itself

                                                                        On a dying planet, imagine,

Our stature so diminished, our swagger so unwarranted,                             

Tonight, rain falls hard, cold, through wind-tossed firs,

                        A week before Christmas, another isolate holiday,

                               Abandoned on the west coast, dislocated, far from family

            And unable to gather anyway, huddled here in the face of it all,

                        Warm and together, a truculent dog

                                    And an ancient cat in tow, still here, still able

                                                            To love, to care, still we

                                                Can create, this world where we are,

            And a world we remember, and a world that remains

                                                            In traces of majestic moments and

                        Resplendent grandeur,

                                    But not tonight, water beading on the windows,

                                                Shadows under streetlamps, little warmth

                                    In this darkness, silence of another pandemic night,

            A notable change since the inception of pandemic,

                                    How quiet the night, even the kids have abandoned

                                                Cruising with nowhere to go,

                        All tucked into seclusion, this unlikely world,

                                           The one we were granted, the one we have ruined,

                                    Debilitated by enfeebled tyrants awash in mediocrity

              And brutality, and oblivious to the desperate feeling

                                                            Of creeping dread

                        In the night, the stain of humanity,

                                                            Intentional wrongheadedness,

                                    Where we live now,

                        Where will we live now, shit up our nest,

                                                                        With no clear path forward,

                                    I watch on in alarm,

                                            Wrapped in dismay, and clutch onto the memory

                                                            Of a better time,

                                                                        A time that isn’t now,

            All chaos and rampant ignorance and such personal and intentional

                        Disregard, going into the third year of pandemic

                                                How could I not write of it,

                                                   Of what it has cost us, of what it has caused,

But we cling to each other, the overwhelming comfort

                                                        Of our being together, against these odds,

                                                Odd bodkins, the undiminished threat

                        Of this world gone mad, this age of unreason,

                                                            With so little hope of appeasement,

            Cocooned in memory, rising to the ceiling

                                                            And escaping out a window left open,

                        Where we will always walk together arm in arm

                                         Down woody paths marveling at firs draped in mist,

                                    The scent of brine, the chill sea air, even the sound

             Of harbor seals barking from the island across the bay,

                                   Cascading tide of memory, what we have gone through

                                                                        To get here, where we are,

                        Holed up in the American west, tucked into Willamette Valley,

                                    Surrounded by strangers, without kith and kin,

                                                We rely on ourselves, even as winter passes in

                                                            Endless days of waiting,

            Waiting for it all to pass, whatever comes,

                                                Whatever waits, we are graced by

                                                            Merged memory, formed over a lifetime,

                  That matters to no one, celebrated only together, pick a memory

                       Like a rose from the garden, your dorm room in Fairchild Hall,

                                                A treacherous hike to the end of Lookout Point,

                                                            All these years drifting up to the ceiling,

                        Dear and true, easy and hard, never forgotten, all of it,