If I could only take one memory from this life

to the next, may it be one of those childhood days

with a crown of aluminum foil and a necklace

made of paperclips. Or perhaps my own child’s birth,

blood pulsing warm as garnets, his new hunger

trying to draw milk from his father’s shoulder.

Or one of the spectacles—hiking a glacier, jumping

from a waterfall, roasting marshmallows in the neon

pulse of lava oozing from a volcano. If it’s only one

memory, maybe it should be an ordinary delight,

like the time I ate grapefruits until my mouth went

numb. Just as I bring cut roses inside to finish dying,

I want to carry the images to the kitchen like a bouquet

of constellations. If it can only be one maybe a night

that taught me about my body. You know those

memories—the fraud of moths, the verdict of candles.

That unwise pathos. This body, so many imperfectly

round years thickening with age like a tree. I don’t

mind that there’s less before me than behind me.

Even in youth I had more fantasies of my shroud

than my wedding dress. Which one is it? Which

memory can I take with me, its aliveness frozen,

like a photograph of fire, its obscene beauty glowing

like a metaphor at the center of the day? If I can only

take one, let me hold this–the striped hammock,

velvet peaches, planes floating through this bronze

afternoon. My heart half mechanical and expensive

as the pain of saints. The shadows of swans brushing

my legs. My eyes close, but my ears are gates. I do

not need to rise anymore from my cradle of light.