September 2017
Michael L. Newell
astrangertotheland@yahoo.com
astrangertotheland@yahoo.com
After spending one-third of my life abroad, I have retired to the south-central Oregon coast where I can enjoy rain, lots of rain, my favorite weather condition. I also am permitted the considerable pleasure of walking past river, creek, and forested hills. Having spent decades in arid settings, my current surroundings, with their attendant wildlife, provide deep contentment.
THE BOOK OF YEARS
Leafing through it one finds
gaps, missing pages where
one expected exhaustive detail.
This is the record of one’s life,
the repository of those stories
recited as though they are
mantras, litanies, well-worn prayers.
Even the most frequently visited
of these tales, however, reveal
(when looked at closely) missing
details, blurred print, misprints—
in short, coherence and meaning
fade when scrutiny intensifies.
This is the unabridged volume
of personal memory. It is where
one stores all information needed
to define who and what one is.
For years it has been the arbiter
of any doubts regarding family
or self or friends. As the years
pile one on top of the other,
the book becomes unwieldy,
hard to hold; the font size recedes
until even the strongest glasses
do not provide access to certain words.
The volume is now too large to read
in one or two or even three sittings.
Certain entries startle when one encounters
them, they describe a stranger’s life, summon
no familiar images to the mind, they threaten
one’s very sanity by calling into question
long held personal truths. One begins
to leave the book on its shelf for longer
and longer periods of time. Finally, one forgets
in which room one has stored the book. One delays
searching for it. A new book is started. It is written
in large print. The entries are kept simple. Only heroic
events are recorded. The old book fades. When it is
mentioned, one has no memory it ever existed.
One memorizes the new book, recites from it daily.
Previously published in A Long Time Traveling (Four-Sep Publications, 2004)
THE BOOK OF YEARS
Leafing through it one finds
gaps, missing pages where
one expected exhaustive detail.
This is the record of one’s life,
the repository of those stories
recited as though they are
mantras, litanies, well-worn prayers.
Even the most frequently visited
of these tales, however, reveal
(when looked at closely) missing
details, blurred print, misprints—
in short, coherence and meaning
fade when scrutiny intensifies.
This is the unabridged volume
of personal memory. It is where
one stores all information needed
to define who and what one is.
For years it has been the arbiter
of any doubts regarding family
or self or friends. As the years
pile one on top of the other,
the book becomes unwieldy,
hard to hold; the font size recedes
until even the strongest glasses
do not provide access to certain words.
The volume is now too large to read
in one or two or even three sittings.
Certain entries startle when one encounters
them, they describe a stranger’s life, summon
no familiar images to the mind, they threaten
one’s very sanity by calling into question
long held personal truths. One begins
to leave the book on its shelf for longer
and longer periods of time. Finally, one forgets
in which room one has stored the book. One delays
searching for it. A new book is started. It is written
in large print. The entries are kept simple. Only heroic
events are recorded. The old book fades. When it is
mentioned, one has no memory it ever existed.
One memorizes the new book, recites from it daily.
Previously published in A Long Time Traveling (Four-Sep Publications, 2004)
©2017 Michael L. Newell
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