Once
You were once my child but you will not remember this. You can not remember this in the same way that I can not remember your children, or your children’s children or the parents I once knew. Time has taken as time has given.
You were once my child and my recollection of you, there, at the window reflecting me, reading Lorca. You were my child there and I sat behind you, watching, reading your hair and your skin as you read the yellowing pages.
And here, now, a recollection of you, next to me watching fogged trees thick and ancient and tired and cold, clawing at the reflection of you in the corner of my eye. But this you cannot remember because I have allowed time to forget.
So let us stay time’s judgment. Let us stay the recession of my children;remain as if cool basalt breathing in now, breathing in through pores deep. Let us call from this dark tunnel in which life pauses, let us call out and remember the other for a moment.
And outside, outside this tunnel, outside this train’s window, the mountains will still be tall as you are short and the snow will still be cold and it will still melt and the grass will fade and the sun will cloud and the stars will remain when morning breaks and the trees will be less foggy and their bark warmer, and the ground will be leaves and dirt and the rain will build our windows.
And you will remember me yet again, you, who were once my child.
