Everything is fragile
skyscrapers
bobby pins
an old woman’s hands
Styrofoam cups
the northern spotted owl
a human heart
you see even the moon has craters
being the old woman that I am
I have come to understand and know this
still my mind forgets all the details
but my heart remembers things
the flickering of starlight
the joyful tears of birth
the song they played at my grandfather’s funeral
falls that scrape more than knees
for words crash like waves upon a shore
relentless like a salesman
and serious like a preacher on Sunday
the memory of sorrows
is a child waiting
promised a day at the
county fair
you can bet your bottom dollar
that day will be remembered
in the joy of going and even more so in the not
it is all the things our hands never hold
that seem to leave the heaviest of weights
for a child never forgets
and one day that boy becomes a man
with a heart that still remembers
what a child cannot forget.
