Follow Me Down
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Kate Buckley's Follow Me Down examines the nature of memory: woven, frozen, imprinted, invented.
There are places in the body that remember.
The songs and stories we tell ourselves to remember: ballads hummed over cradles, counting games learned at a great-grandmother s knee, histories we re taught so we may learn to emulate or abhor them, and, later, the stories we create to keep those we love safe from harm.
White haunch smooth as parchment,
complacent, bereft of the calligraphy of years,
the Braille of coupling and belonging.
These memories, both real and invented, set both in present day and the distant past, invite readers to explore their own humanity as well as the stories that unite us all. When does memory end? When does it begin?
...if you could have seen inside her,
you would have seen us:
small, woven into her underbelly,
miniature women still without fur,
moth-hands clutched together,
praying even then.
Memory, which resides deep within the walls of houses and deep within the body as well, colors everything. Memory, which can even lead us through grief, back into love:
like a sea
turning in on itself,
salt licking salt,
coming home.
Two poems in this collection are Pushcart nominees.
