Remembered poem 2013

Dear Everyone:

I came across this poet in a magazine.
Her name is Naomi Shihab Nye.
Of Palestinian-American heritage
she is a well-recognized poet, songwriter
and author.

This poem - "Remembered" is from her
book "Words Under the Words (1995).
Portland, Oregon: A Far Corner book.

I find the poem to share startling insights.

See below.

REMEMBERED

He wanted to be remembered so he gave
people things they would remember him by.
A large trunk, handmade of ash and cedar.
A toolbox with initials shaped of scraps.
A tea kettle that would sing every morning,
antique glass jars to fill with crackers, noodles, beans.
A whole family of jams he made himself from
the figs and berries that purpled his land.

He gave these things unexpectedly.
You went to see him and came home loaded.
You said "Thank-you" till your lips grew heavy
with gratitude and swelled shut. Walking with him
across the acres of piney forrest, you noticed
the way he talked to everything, a puddle, a stump,
the same way he talked to you. "I declare you do
look purty sittin' there in that field reflectin' the
light like some kind of mirror, you know what?
As if objects could listen.
As if earth had a memory too.

At night we propped our feet by the fireplace
and laughed and showed photographs and the
fire remembered all the crackling music it knew.
The night remembered how to be dark and the
forrest remembered how to be mysterious and
in bed, the quilts remembered how to tuck up
under our chins. Sleeping in that house was
like falling down a deep well, rocking in a bucket
all night long.

In the mornings we'd stagger away from an
unforgettable breakfast of biscuits-he'd lead us
into the next room ready to show us something
or curl another story into our ear. He scrawled
the episodes out in elaborate longhand and
gave them to a farmer's wife to type.

Stories about a little boy and a grandfather,
chickens and prayer tents, butter beans and lightning.
He was the little boy.
Some days his brain could travel backwards
easier than it could sit in a chair, right there.

When we left he'd say "Don't forget me!
You won't forget me now, will you? as if
our remembering could lengthen his life.
I wanted to assure him, there will always
be a cabin in our blood only you live in.
But the need for remembrance silenced me,
a ringing rising up out of the soil's centuries, the ones
who plowed this land, whose names we do not know.