Poem Number Five in a Year : Cleanup

Cleanup

I guess, I am thinking, that it is time for more
for more of a continuing goodbye
for I am trying to conclude and rid myself
of the detritus of yes, you guessed it . . .
paper and files and staples and old rubber bands
crackly with age and dissolution.

So I run into and run over the memories of you,
lingering traces of your life and others and mine
inextricably wound up in, muddled and woven
a midst each others.

What shall I keep and disregard?
what paper should I shred, read, not read and scan
scan into its particulate digits and electronic emphemera of
scattered bytes of ones and zeros that make up memories and lives?

so this is not goodbye but a way of remembering
that between the tears and melancholia there remains happiness
that I loved you, you loved me
and that this idea cannot be vanquished

even as the years dilute the things we collect
and they become other people's memories
dear to their hearts and so on and so forth.

I still miss you though.
I still love you.
It is nice to see you again
but I miss your voice
I miss your voice.
I miss your voice.


     David McCullough
     July 11, 2015