For Deborah Digges
The poet
who hurled herself
off the stadium
at Tufts
was happy once—
bounding into class
with her Walkman
singing.
She’d tell me
how the woods
behind her home
in Amherst
would glow with orange
at sunrise
and how her mother
was once a Rockette.
There’s so much
to not remember
when the future
becomes
assembled past:
the nest of memory,
bundle of twigs
for fires
in a living room.
Kierkegaard said
backwards
is the only way
to understand this.
As if memory
is a song—
a needle
deep in a groove
that keeps
repeating.
