Memory’s Home
A poem by Cathryn Essinger

Memory’s Home
–after “Salt and Feathers”
by Katina Pastis Radwanski

Here is the land of remembered things–
memory’s dark home–where the salt

of the earth is wedded to the sky.
Here is salt on the tail of a memory,

the language of childhood, nursery rhymes
and playground chants. Here is laughter

and adolescence, the mystery of old age.
Here are all things gone, yet present–

wind swept land shaped by the sea,
the little burr of the forget-me-not.

Never mind, the broken things,
the cities in ruin, love thrown aside,

those whom you will never see again.
In this space all things are reframed.

Here are the names of everyone
you have ever loved. Here is eternity

tangled in the sea grass, and just over
the horizon a place that we call forever.

About the Author:

Cathryn Essinger is the author of five books of poetry–most recently The Apricot and the Moon and Wings, Or Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight?, from Dos Madres Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, The New England Review, Rattle, Ecotone, Terrain and other journals. They have been nominated for Pushcarts and “Best of the Net,” featured on The Writer’s Almanac, and reprinted in American Life in Poetry. She was Ohio’s Poet of the Year in 2005 for her book My Dog Does Not Read Plato. She lives in Troy, Ohio where she raises Monarch butterflies.

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