Still-shadowed memory, your geography’s
resemblance to pareidolia; fractions of light shapes
in a superimposition of items, termed in landscape.
Come with marked edges, you are behind me.
It is as if, I no longer move through those streets
from here, in grubby England.
A climatic memory, untidy shelves,
where all items are ordered by the person
who put them there, for no reason.
 
Will I come to the place some day on Google Maps
as I would the streets of Hiroshima or Casablanca?
Forgetting will be to rendezvous
& find a half recalled locale,
not chosen,as breathless as a shadow.
Noting pathetic fallacies, stymying, meaning.
No single person knows all the places a single person knows.
Handfuls know the single empty hand.
Forgetful, until the rendezvous of mind
 
& place, pushes me to reify memory
—a natured people pastoralized; dairy pasteurized.
Startled by absence, & by choice.
Remembering done with matter& force.
A memory as liquescent as concrete: absorbs heat,
reflects the hard sun, makes the rain smell with warmth.
Copy & paste—a time lapse of a city being built.
Unlike the compost heap, everything
can be composed of rubble & will.
 
So as not to forget, I repeat the minor nouns,
& walk the amply trodden walks I walked
: the subway stops & landmarks: the 5 day market,
the harbour with the ruddy-stalling-scents,
pannier farms, the water towers, school, bus stop
—the baffled, collapsed bright faces,
bronzed sand, the brilliant kerfuffle
of my heart she moves through, remotely,
beating between two homes I made.

Daniel Marshall