On Memorizing A Poem

“In the beginning was the Word.” Creation is involved here, not just “print-on-a-page”! These are flowers of the ages, Nor can you clip them and stuff them in a mental vase. You have to plant them, inside! First-reading scatters the seeds of words, atoms whirling with life, even the ones that seem inert. Then: repetition becomes the steady hand holding the watering can. Imperceptibly, every word sprouts. Tendrils grow, reach out, join hands, join a clause, a sentence. Finally, each word so tropically bonded it no longer exists alone. A stanza coheres. The force flows on, new critical mass, the spirit leaps across the gap to the next stanza, back to the one before! Every reading, connections firmer. New ones arise, flourish like bougainvillea. Roads appear. Signs. Turn Left Here. Paths and gardens of knowing form in the brain. Flowering vines climb up in the air, perfume it, <i>above</i> the brain! Finally, a world lives inside to be invoked, called forth like a genie. Every poem or story made one’s own initiates its keeper into a long line stretching back to ancient campfires. Every teller chants with Homer, Valmiki, bards whose names we do not know- carries this Light in eyes onward