I hear myself using the present tense
describing the old past
as if heaving up the heavy rope of
incident and accident
that reappears from the abyss like
a beanstalk.
Though it is more like looking through
the wrong end of a telescope.
Or being stuck in an echo chamber
in which the sound died
a long time ago.
There’s a granular quality to memory,
irritating as sand in the shoe,
my world always a grind, the present
turning into the past with some
damage, paint chipped off,
fabric with holes from being too often
remembered in patches.
Like reading Genesis backwards
I lose the reverse thread to
innocence before agency.
Luci Shaw was born in London in 1928 and has lived in Australia and Canada. Author of over 35 books of poetry and nonfiction prose, since 1986 she has been writer-in-residence at Regent College, Vancouver. In 2013 she received the 10th annual Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. Her most recent publications are The Thumbprint in the Clay (InterVarsity Press) and Sea Glass: New & Selected Poems (WordFarm), and Eye of the Beholder (Paraclete Press) is forthcoming. She lives in Bellingham, WA.