Curio by Elizabeth Spires - The New Criterion

Poems

October 2001

Curio

by Elizabeth Spires

Burke

was right!

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Today, wave upon wave,
memories wash up
on the bracken-covered beach.

I walk the tideline,
picking and choosing,
making the worthless precious.

Stone, shell, carapace,
I put this one and that one
into my pocket.

What was ignored, passed over,
what nobody else wanted,
I will place among the curios,

discrete, exposed to
light’s radiance. See how
they glimmer and shine.

Closer, come closer, and you
will smell the briny smell
of time, and sea, and rot.

That day, I will recall later,
laughing or weeping, brought
to my knees once more

by holy memory. What once
was alive is dead, is alive
in memory… I’ll say to no one.

Wave upon wave, the memories
come. Nothing will stop them
until I, too, am a memory

to the ones that I loved.

Elizabeth Spires' new book of poems, The Wave-Maker, was published by Norton in July 2008.

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