The Blue Moon Review

Poem on a Forgettable Morning
by Brian Bartlett
Who can count the ashes of past hours?
In the sprawling pit where the days go
most are extinct, extinguished, but stray winds
stir embers to the top, fan some mornings
into a glow:
            say, a woman with animal-skins for clothes
and wool-thick hair to her waist
strikes two stones together -- the first cooking-fire...
or a singer on a split porch
fooling around with a tune
scrapes a curve of broken glass along taut strings --
the dawning of bottleneck guitar.

What are ashes to some are embers to others. 
I have my own burning ones, recoverable 
or not: the day my ancestors loaded wagons high 
with chairs, pots, silverware, bedding
and left Maine for New Brunswick, or the day
my father and mother first kissed full on the lips.

Memory -- a hand too small to hold
more than few charred sticks -- lets most nights
fall from its grasp. Is there any buried ash
that doesn't deserve a word? Twenty-four hours
of pure forgettableness?
                        Climbing down into the pit
where mornings and nights go, I would lift one
into the light, and say at least "It was."
......................