March 2002
by Miller Williams
You can't keep all of the past in a backpack or purse
all of the time. It's heavy, and what's worse,
it wouldn't leave room for much else,
what with drive-in movies, wooden motels,
a record player with needles, a touring car.
But what we were is much of what you are,
and what you are ... believe me when I say
that what you are is going to wear away
little by little until, to your awful surprise,
you aren't all there; you barely recognize
what's left. Go now and rummage back to find
some odds and ends that may have been consigned
to dusty boxes somewhere in the mind.
Put them together and make of them a book
with ragged, bone-white leaves and a leather look.
Use whatever is there -- how it was to spend
a long while in silence with a friend,
to watch the trembling death of a dog, to look
with wonder on the ordinary, to like
the feel in the flesh of time passing, to be
your crowded selves with nothing more from me.
I can't say what you'll find for stuff and glue.
I don't know all that you're made of. I hope you do.
Walk away from Omelas.