Excerpt from the Ornithological Field Diaries of A. Graham Brown, 1947-1957
Digital image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
Trying to remember an event, my mother pauses, says
I’m having trouble with the figuring out part of my brain.
Her mind once a river, now a swamp slow moving,
sometimes stagnant.
A river’s trickle evokes home
movies we never had, the silent 8-mm’s with the click, click, click
of time passing—a kid’s birthday party, or families opening
Christmas packages. Never moments like the day
I got caught smoking at 12. Can’t remember
if the cigarettes were Parliaments or Tareytons,
the names all sounded important even regal.
Ads featuring well-dressed folks lighting up,
taking a drag, blowing their cares away.
Fearing the consequences of being outed I ran away
before my mother got home from work, slept
on the plant-studded bank of the Rouge River.
The ground was hard, noises unfamiliar, and
the night grew cold. When I exhaled, the air
turned to fog that resembled the smoke
that brought me there, as if there was no place
for guilt to hide.
I missed the softness
of my bed, that is, the feeling of home. Last
night I dreamed Mom was the fog gathered
on the window. When I got too close, the warmth
of my breath made her disappear.
If grief inhabits a swamp, then memory is a river
that floods it, the brimming waters saturating,
littering the land with alluvial debris,
leaving no place to rest, no terra firma.
I want to remember the things you said
when I was younger, remember how we were
in a room together just talking. But I’ve always
had a poor memory and today you sound
like a child, sweet, innocent.
I guess I could
make it all up, lie to myself just to feel better.
But right now the figuring out part of my brain
isn’t working that well because everywhere I look,
everything I see is a swamp.