MEMENTO
You have written me
love notes for as long
as I can remember. Now
you wonder where
they are, perhaps imagining
a ribbon around them, neat
stack of years,
perfumed, dogeared.
I explain I have thrown them away.
I explain you keep notes like those
if you fear a day will come
when you will not
receive more,
if you expect the future
to resemble a lesser
version of now, and you
will need props or
cues to conjure a person,
a love. On this bright
winter afternoon,
I hope to have
no memory of you, there
in your wool-trimmed coat
leaning in the sun
on the windblown sill.
Dana Stangel
WHAT IS COMING
From the dark frame
of temple and brow, I see
what is before me: a carousel,
my child rising and falling
on an old carved creature, gold
braided poles of a whirling
forest that pulls her in
the coming dusk, low light
clinging to wood. I wait for her
to reappear and when
she does, in the relief
of false absence, she smiles
then twists her neck
to keep on seeing me
as the motion takes her around again --
this is a sort of practice,
watching a loved one go,
axis of age, revolution of roles,
throb in what you don't see,
what you know is coming.
Dana Stangel
