A Memento?

A Poem and Thoughts on a Poem

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I wrote a poem the other day and I'm terrified to share it with you. Which means I should definitely share it with you. Here goes…

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A Memento?

These easy nothings

of our youth, these

thin-skinned superpowers

that we took

for eternal.

The low register

of our falsetto,

the ability to recall

the word membrane.

What now?

A poster screams save

our gulf.

But I want it

gone.

The thing that connects

and separates

us

stretched so thin now,

the thing.

What’s it called?

A filament maybe?

A tendril?

A memento?

It hums with my song

to you,

keening,

cracking,

high pitched, and

lower,

lower,

gone.

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Thoughts on A Memento?

Something about poetry lends itself to sadness. Not the garment-rending woe of despair, but the slim line of darkness that peeks around the edge of a sunny afternoon.

I found myself on just such a sunny afternoon recently visiting family in Austin. I was staying at a favorite hotel, the San Jose, and enjoying its many quirks, one of which took the form of a poem pinned next to the mirror over the sink—something small and beautiful to read while one performs one’s ablutions.

I was reminded how much poetry meant to me when I was in the throes of adolescence. How much I loved writing it and reading it. And how after the guitar had installed a few callouses on my fingers, poetry had been supplanted by song lyrics. Similar but not the same.

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The next thing I knew, I was walking down South Congress, writing a poem. In my head at first. Then on a hotel notepad. Remembering how much I enjoy solving all those little problems, working those weird puzzles, building a machine that does a lot with a little. Or tries to anyway. Aspires.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved poetry—each poem’s an aspiration, a dream of a connection. It’s the distilled essence of those seemingly larger artistic undertakings: albums, novels, essays… A poem is a furtive gasp, hope disguised as despair, sunlight disguised as darkness.

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And so, after agonizing, I’ve shared this poem with y’all. Thank you for giving me the space to do so. Thanks, as always, for calling Time & Temperature.

yrs,

Rhett

PS: (Typewriter illustration by the brilliant Dan Santat for the back cover of our book No More Poems.)

PPS: (Congrats to Dan for his recent National Book Award for his graphic memoir A First Time For Everything.)