Memory is loss, she said
or something like that
and it went through me like a shot
a string of losses?
But no, there has to be
another side:
a floating poetry of discards
(jettison, we used to say)
Erasures beyond measure,
The second law
of thermodynamics
or even just
a folk tradition of
entropy
Capacity to discern
among the clouds of human grief
a piercing light
a chuckle, a cluck
a gloss across time and space