Written Memory

  by David Chorlton

We who keep records are lost
in the world of those who lived
between the desert and the canyons
and who left no written works
because we want something to remember
their lives by because it seems we need
to remember them more than they
needed to remember themselves they
of whom we can only guess how they watched
the seasons flow between the sycamores
or what they thought
when looking at the sky at night
as a mystery so pure
they could believe in it while we
have turned it into science and labeled
each star so as to reassure ourselves
it exists within a certain order
or so we think we for whom
a light with no name cannot shine
brightly enough while we
spend our lives perfecting words 
before the next people come
to ask who we were and we want to tell them
there was a bird that hovered
wearing a coat of mirrors
and lizards flashed as quickly
as lightning in the season
when rivers came back from the dead.