one week's memory

i read yesterday morning

(while drinking coffee with cream on the backporch)

of how human's capacity for memory has changed.

and i say changed, not evolved.

in this book, they talk of images and memory.

no mention of solidity, but viscosity.

this past week, since returning home from the west coast,

has been all images and experience.

i stepped out of the shower and was wiping the mirror

clean of condensation to look at how blood shot my eyes were.

jacob stood on the other side of the door, somewhere

about where the large mirror leans.

he had found lassa, the ram, or the remains thereof,

buried his skull in the compost, marked it with grass.

a hot air balloon landed by our onions yesterday,

the sound of gas pulsing.

a van came and pulled up along the drying stalks of corn,

the image of a balloon painted on its side,

bumping along the grass to pick up the riders.

we watched the events from the drive, each with a watermelon 

between our sides and elbows.

the sky filled with grey on wednesday and thursday.

the light would break and hit half the fields.

that finally, after august, are beginning to look neat and tidy,

like paper stacked and organized on shelves.

neat plants growing in the deep colors of autumn:

all purples, hunters, almost blue.

certain trees have decided to turn, 

all purples, hunters, almost blue.

i picked apples alone on thursday;

i ate bites from five and my belly burned.

he said yesterday that we shouldn't be scared to try the new.

that we should take our collected images and apply them to the

present, shift and change them, pour them, viscous,

like syrup, over the situation, and delight in the sweetness

of what was, memory, and what is, the image.