matome.naver
The Library Has Come Undone
So many words about tears, about awe, about love,
I named each grouping, calling them poems.
Yet today, some poems and their words are lost in a mind
of too much time..
so many fragmented nights, piles of weeks
like heavy books falling over me.
The whole library has come undone,
names lost, order replaced by chaos and fog.
Like pictures fading in a drawer,
of people so long ago, no one remembers their names.
Like fish swimming here and there…never returning to here.
So here goes on without them…
and something else sits in the scene for awhile where they once rotated,
in impressive schools, inspiring dreams.
Now it’s a shell, or a fallen boot, at the bottom of the sea
Now it’s here and now we have no memory… until something else takes its place.
We should always know our own, but even that goes.
Our flesh and blood born from our sleepless nights, of passion and pain,
Lost in a veil of “I can’t remember this poem’s name”
While we are looking for what was lost,
we come upon a few, that we’ve signed at the bottom,
and yet they look unfamiliar, like strangers,
who, at one time, we might have intimately known,
but have almost totally forgotten.
The whole library has come undone;
those systems we used so well..no longer work as before.
If our little word groupings,
our paintings, our diaries and prayers
are not gathered safely to sleep on a cloud,
backed up and tucked in, while floating eternally (or so we hope),
Who could say they ever were here, for a day, a year a lifetime?
Karima Hoisan
Oct. 23, 2018
Costa Rica
Digital Rabbit Hole 
Owch, that is SO evocative. Of poems, of everything. I’ve found old family pictures, of fascinating people I’m likely related to, but no one now living knows who they are. Time moves on, and moves on, and there are entirely new things in old places; which is terribly sad but also the way the wonder of the world works. That library (and what a perfect picture!) and your poem, make me feel weepy, and deeply happy, at the same time.
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Thank you Dale for leaving this comment…and yes there is a real mixture of nostalgia, and joy in remembering things that have almost become forgotten. It’s like for an instant we grab them from the abyss, hold them in our hands, remembering and then…..they slip away. I always find it ironic that I can’t remember the names of my own poems sometimes… It drives me crazy, and yet, makes me appreciate them more, when I can somehow produce them into the now, by snatching them from the fog, As you say, it really is about Everything..Life’s marching Timeline…
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Nothing hurts more than all that what fades away. Ideas, thoughts, people, things … Thats why past is so important. Past and history are the keys of our today living.
And I think your picture of a library is really the right one to show that we are not only here and now. We, we all came here packed with memories, ideas and thoughts, what we have done and what we haven’t, with traditions and what we’ve learned.
That is really a private Library of a liteftime. And our legacy.
Maybe someone in the future will be interested in our legacy and finds out what we did and why we did and who we were. That is all we can ask for.
While I was reading your poem, I remembered our movie of Jorge Newberry.
The thing is that mostly all people of all times in that manner are the same. They left their library and now it waits for someone to open it.
Did I mention that I really love your poem?
If not: I really LOVE IT!
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Aww thanks Nat:) Big Hugss..and yes the Newbery video is very appropriate…We salvaged some bits and pieces of an entire lifetime and made a small video..something that exists, and visible in the here and now.We might not remember everything, even though we made it, but somethings will remain in our memory…until, they too begin to fade…but we can always turn it on and refresh it all:) Really happy my poem sparked your own thoughts and ponderings..Big Hugs Nat! I’m not planning on forgetting you..hehe 🙂 Not in my plans!
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So beautiful. So painful. So true. Is life simply a series of stills? Screenshots of our experiences? A moving picture? It does seem sad we seem to lose these moments. These images. Ideas. Feelings. Your eloquent words shape our feelings about things-our world-others. We may forget your particular words. Having lived thru a stroke, I understand the fleeting memories of things I swore never to forget. Of mental snapshots that seemed so precious I could never forget. But, life happens. Strokes happen. Alzheimer’s happens. Injuries happen. Time seems to fade and blur everything. You try to grab at it and hold it tight. It is grabbing a handful of water. HOWEVER, As it turns out-all these amazing images-feelings-experiences-have become built into our being. Never fear-they are not “lost”. We have absorbed them and they live in our experience of Earth. Beyond Earth, all these wonderful, painful, extraordinary things still live in us. Every wonderful feeling, image, person, feeling is recorded forever if we choose. It is part of our being. Forever. So-the library may appear in chaos and loss. Never fear-it’s till all there in our heart. Our being’s experience. Be at peace as nothing is lost!
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Oh my Ron, just seeing I never replied to your comment. Grabbing a handful of water is the perfect metaphor..for trying to hang on to all our memories..As we have commented before,this moving train , we call our lives, has only one direction, and sometimes after years of speeding forward, things naturally get left behind…get lost. Still, we hope to retain as much as we can, and carry it with us..I know I certainly do..Thank you for your words Ron, I know you speak from a very unique position, as someone who came back from the fog.
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This one I had to let settle a while. Very powerful emotions there! A mind is such a strange thing. For years and years we collect thoughts, feelings, memories and even grudges. Believing them precious, useful or maybe in some cases we just don’t know what else to think. Then, as the years fly by we’re preoccupied and then suddenly — we don’t recognize our own collection. We’re not sure, did it happen this way or that, who was there and why and who was I even then? Gives me shivers, but it’s also a good time to call it even with the past and star living today.
Thank you for your thoughts! Hugss!
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Sorry Joey, I missed replying to your comment too..Our brains, just clumps of thinking meat,actually retain so much..yet can’t retain everything..I think clearing out the useless(like we do in inventory) getting over the past hurts and resentments etc…maybe makes a little more room to remember what we truly want to…but these meat hardrives..fill up too..Good to back them up now and then:) Thank you for your comment!
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