Limits

Only he Remembered the day we met And only I The day we said goodbye: “Last day of  June, our first blackberry pie,” He always said. A wood fire in the summer kitchen, The hottest day.... A squall in the bedroom. I can’t remember. Nor he, The December cube of  clay, The storm the day before, How the bare trees Played Giant Step in the dawn wind, Or how On the other bed, rhythmically Touching her knuckles to the wall, My mother slipped forever into fantasy. Only he Remembered the spoken hate (Its change too sheepish to impart) Saw daggers still growing In bristling clump out of my heart. I beg you, kids—no memorials, please. Don’t write poems to me. Don’t bother. What we said we said. What’s unsaid lacks ears. In this I’m like my father.