PASSAGE AND RECALL BY KRYS KACZAN
Restored to memory,
As the dawn breaks upon my sight,
I recover meaning
From the shadows of the night.
Memory, open the door
To so much and so more,
Hold the door open,
Now that I have awoken;
Not that I slept much at all.
I have lain awake
More than half the night,
Wondering how we gather meaning
From all the vestiges of seeming,
So we read our life like a book.
Again and again we look
For the meaning of a smile,
A tear, a laugh, a cry.
And memory, careful memory, supplies the answer why.
Open Sesame,
You have to say,
But it is no use forgetting
The word to unlock the hoard.
As the pen is mightier than the sword
Because it is able to record,
So the paint brush can do this as well.
The memory is one of sight,
Born fresh and new upon the light.
Krys, a Niagara artist, has been able to recall
Across the passage of the years,
That time when she was a child
And when she first smiled
To see the apple blossom break
Into snowy clusters to burst forth and shake
Along the gnarled and twisted boughs
Of the many orchards on her family farm.
Away and away the trees rolled
In green clumps and ridges,
Quite green again, once the blossoms fell,
After having burst forth in such an orgy of white.
She remembers it so well
That she has been able
To tell it like a fable
Of Creation on its first days,
When God turned His gaze
On the world He had just made
And saw that it was good.
That is its meaning
Contained in shape and seeming,
In every shade and hue,
Old, preserved in the mind,
And eternally fresh and kind.
