MEMORY PALACE

On the advice of Dame Frances Yates

I built a memory palace years ago

(A small one; more a villa, really)

Stocked with symbolic statues,

Enigmatic pictures, weapons, geegaws,

And instruments I cannot play –

All intended to refresh my recollection

Of the vast stores of information

I intended to acquire. (My childhood

Was a series of flags, a flutophone

And a gaudily dressed toy bear).

When my house vanished I moved

Into the palace's old stables

Where someone -- not me; I can’t drive –

Had abandoned a Knox Runabout

With three flat tires. The palace itself

Has been much abused; cats and ninjas,

For no reason I can understand,

Broke in and, apparently disheartened

By the paltry memories I'd left,

Sanded some down and repainted them

Sold or gave away many others,

Dragged in things that caught their fancy

And rearranged everything. I am pretty sure

I was not actually the criminal mastermind

Known as the Dreadlord Zircon 

The summer after fourth grade and yet

I recall so clearly the highlights of his career
And --if the statue of Trismegistos isn't lying –

Exactly where my gang and I hid our loot.

SHADOWING

Some say I resemble you and I do
But as a shadow, casually cast.
You were born at the moment
Sharp eyes became uncertain
If a thread was blue or green
So I see things invisible to see.
It disconcerts me to find that,
Long years before I was born,
You walked lands I thought mine
By grace and right of first discovery.
I have had to haul down my flags
And tell the kings that lands I claimed
In their names were never theirs at all.
Reflecting sometimes that we both
Have always been fond of shadows
(Also ghosts, dreams, frogs,
Mirrors, snapdragons and parables)
I am almost, for a while, content.