Wild Is the Wind

About what’s past,Hold on when you can, I used to say, And when you can’t, let go, as if memory were one of those mechanical bulls, easily dismountable, should the ride turn rough. I lived, in those days, at the forest’s edge — metaphorically, so it can sometimes seem now, though the forest was real, as my life beside it was. I spent much of my time listening to the sounds of random, un- knowable things dropping or being dropped from, variously, a middling height or a great one until, by winter, it was just the snow falling, each time like a new, unnecessary taxonomy or syntax for how to parse what’s plain, snow from which the occasional lost hunter would emerge every few or so seasons, and — just once — a runaway child whom I gave some money to and told no one about, having promised ...You must keep what you’ve promised very close to your heart, that way you’ll never forget