Ritual Memory / Will Dockery

Ritual Memory

If these words of love
fell into bad timing
put them away
like a flower in a book.

This place has become a valley
all is lost here in the rain
but I am older and wiser
and understand the tricks of life

how sadness and soft light
are a natural form of life
as is cold rain
in the later part of November.

I feel so old yet not wise
foolhardy as the day I was born.
Put me away.
I make a better memory.

I will not rip it out of here.

It is an honest poem

so I will not edit it.
Why would I even want to do that?

~~
Will Dockery, 1997
from Selected Poems, 1976-2019, 2019 

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

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