The Memory of the Young
By Maria Hummel
The memory of the young is grasshopper:
thin legs, backwards knees
balance a being that is green,
gold-tinged, that wants to keep singing.
That sings the afternoon rays
serrated, that flecks the sight of wind.
The memory of the young is leap-by-leap.
It sweeps itself for clues to its song.
One day, it says, and it means twenty-three.
Long ago, it says, and it means a week.
Two round eyes look out from it.
It hides and flings itself and hides again.
It is underfoot and in the bushes.
The memory of the young is summer,
summer only, dancing and eating,
eating mightily, biting holes in leaves
to let in sky. Its antennae twitch
and swivel. It could be looking or it could
be listening. The memory of the young
is rarely final on things. Rarely clear.
Nestled under the blades of fields,
in coolest shade, the dirt goes damp
and tender and yields its secret names.
To be young is to know these names
almost better than your own heart,
to hear them rising through crumb
and root, nutrient and trapped rain,
less than a breath, yet greater
than the first sight of the lightning tree,
which is the kind of thing
you remember when you are young,
along with the clap
of the toybox lid over your head,
because you are so small
you can climb inside it. Along with
raisins are wrinkled grapes,
and lake is splash, and dear whistling
laugh is grandmother. That feeling
of being slender and furless. New
and sprung. Fresh-made, stiff-
winged. That fear of shadows.
Of swift change. Of the first sharp pain
when you are plucked and taken,
and dissolve into another,
which is always too soon. The memory
of the young is a glade filled with you
though you are unseen,
your colors combining with the colors
of trees, and every one of you is ravenous,
singing shrill and joyous, as if all is lost
already, to the cost of multitude
and the waiting forest.
