There’s a word, I love,
I heard & said & said,
days ago, that now
cannot remember.
The sense of it remains somehow
rounded round the palette,
sound still on the tongue,
but now unutterable, almost impalpable.
This is what memory is like.
The taste of a certain moment
sticks in the throat.
Another settles in a cavity
that years have slowly eaten away.
We savor the familiar,
long for the sweet trigger
from an earlier life,
some unrecoverable trace.
The word does not satisfy this.
Note: I think the second half needs another stanza. I worked on some ideas but cut them for balance. Any suggestions? I had been thinking about this poem (the word on the tip of the tongue) for weeks. Listening to Calvin Forbes read "Momma Said" on The Poetry Magazine Podcast helped me get this draft written. Thanks to Don Share and Christian Wiman; they may not publish my poems but sometimes they help make them.)
I really like this, especially "rounded round he palette/ sound still on the tongue." I agree about the need for another stanza--the feel of the word come first, and memory is like that remembered, nameless feeling, then the word itself won't satisfy the taste. So, if feeling and taste fall short, what about sight or proximity? The nearness to the trigger somehow recreating the forgotten, a new ghost of what was/what could be, still nameless, but getting closer?
ReplyDelete(for the record)
ReplyDeleteI like the way it ends. I'm not sure what direction the things you wrote and cut went, but I don't think it feels off-center. I think it IS as is.