The Shadow Gross National Product
By Barbara de la Cuesta
Where does it all go?
Sonatas memorized
Clarinet lessons
Sixteen years worth
Thirty years of
Diaries kept faithfully
Novels in drawers
Out of print
Foreign travel
Photos of
Sketchbooks filled
With long ago nudes, and
Poems on napkins and in
Albums
Painful letters,
Initials carved in trees—ah these
Last longest...
Chemistry notes
Separations negotiated...
Or excruciatingly ripped away
Like bandages from wounds...?
The town dump, you say
Or senescent memory
Or, more sentimentally, in memory
Of friends, descendants...
Not what I mean.
I mean the exquisite learning
Such efforts
Such efforts are said
To alter synapses but
Synapses short circuit don't they
Blow out
In that final effort?
But no,
It must, I say,
All be preserved
Somewhere
In the germ plasma
I say
In the sub atomic particles
I say
Awaiting confirmation
From cosmologists,
Biologists.
They are my
Theologians.
Source: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/on-the-river-this-morning-by-barbara-de-la-cuesta/
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