POEM

Memory by John Stone From Where Water Begins: New Poems and Prose Louisiana State University Press, 1998 © 1998 by John Stone. Used with permission.
Posted November 10, 2000 · Issue 90

Memory

is the ocean
in which she floats at random
touching or sometimes only trying

to touch those islands
of which she has always been
especially fond:

this one because it's the very one
on which her mother reigned
as the most beloved empress

this one
because it is the earth from which
she set adrift her husband's body

this one
because it's where
she hopes to move herself someday

away from wars and insistences
that she take her pills
to that calm latitude

where the camellias are forever gorgeous
and pink crape myrtle
beautiful

beyond her present comprehension.

- for Juanita Nelson

John Stone is a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine. He is the author of four books of poetry, all published by Louisiana State University Press; the most recent is Where Water Begins: New Poems and Prose. In the Country of Hearts is a book of his collected essays, most of which appeared originally in the New York Times Magazine. Stone has given talks and readings in 36 U.S. states.

Julia Kuhl has done illustrations for the New Yorker and the New York Times, among others. She now lives in Heidelberg, Germany, with her neurobiologist husband and is working on a comic book - a Fulika atra (coot) version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.