---
title: Riptide of memory
genre: verse

id: riptide_memory
toc: "Riptide of memory"

project:
    title: Stark Raving
    class: stark
    order: 16
    next:
    - title: About the author
      link: about-the-author
    - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
      link: sixteenth-chapel
    prev:
    - title: Something about all music being performances of _4′33″_ in places where other bands happen to be playing
      link: music-433
    - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
      link: i-think-its-you
...

| Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory.
| The air up here is thin, but the wind blows harder
| than anywhere else I know.  It threatens to rip
| my body away, like [an angel of death][], to the stars.

| In Arizona, I thought I would forget the rain,
| forget its sound on a roof like a hard wind, forget
| its smell like a far away ocean.  Luckily for me
| it rains here.  Luckily, because I forget too easily.

| In a dream, [my father is caught by a riptide][] off-shore.
| He's pulled far out, far enough that the shoreline's
| a dim line in his [memory][] on the horizon.  I can see him
| swimming, hand over hand, pulling his small weight

| back to land.  I see him as [another shipwreck][] victim,
| coughing sand and seawater, beard woven with seaweed.
| I see him lying there a long time.  I see all this
| as he tells me the story, years later, the riptide

| only a [ghost][] in his memory, I only a child falling
| asleep.  My mother's making mayonnaise rolls
| in the kitchen, a recipe I'll send for years later,
| in Arizona, in the monsoon season, when my thirst

| pulls me back home, my memory's lonesome twinkle
| like [stars above the mountains][].  I'll send for it
| and try to make them, but at this altitude they'll
| crumble into dust like desert air, like a memory.

[an angel of death]: angeltoabraham.html
[my father is caught by a riptide]: father.html
[memory]: ouroboros_memory.html
[another shipwreck]: shipwright.html
[ghost]: one-hundred-lines.html
[stars above the mountains]: finding-the-lion.html