I will perennially remember

Go, I say to myself, tired of my notebooks and my reluctant pen, 

go water the newly transplanted sorrel and dill, 

spriggy yet in their new humus and larger clay pots; 

water artemisia, salvia, centaurea 

which are classical, perennial, and have promised to spread their nimbus 

of violet and silver through our patchy backyard 

for summers to come, from poor soil. 

Then I'll return indoors to the words copied 

on the yellow legal pad, 

 

her words 

    which I cannot shape, 

        which sentence me: 

 

"There are things I prefer 

to forget—" 

    (what things?) "Just, 

 

things—" "Darling, I can't 

    locate myself—" "Where 

        are you?' 

 

And if she, in her compassion, forgets 

or doesn't know, I will perennially remember, 

how I erase these messages 

I later transcribe: one punch 

of one button on the answering machine— 

and how, with cruel 

helpfulness 

I have asked: 

"Don't you remember?" 

 

restoring to her a garden of incident 

which she cannot keep, water, or tend, 

and which will die, soon, from her ministrations.

 

[Rosanna Warren {1953- } 'Diverson', from The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997]