If I'm like my mother, and her mother,

and all of her sisters, I won't remember

any of this, the past in the wind

    like a white sheet flapping on the clothesline,

dragging itself in brown dust that won't

be remembered. Invention, intercession—

                         it doesn't matter.

Think a Daliesque clock

on the green lawn chair, and

   how I moved into the sun on cool mornings,

and moved again, juggling the explosion

of light, and later into the shadows

  of whatever gave itself up,

the sensible quieting down.

I'm here now, white sheet

  still on the line. The wind has left.

I saw a deer on the driveway yesterday,

paused before heading

  down into the brush, looking back,

paused and looking back

as if it, too, was trying to remember,

and then it went on.