REASONS FOR YOUR FORGETTING

Sometimes you remember your anniversary

weeks later, marvel at how you’ve moved

on. It is the year of rabbits and deer

of coyotes encroaching. The house

changed now, its downstairs kitchen, living room

where the cars were parked. You’ve rebuilt

the bedroom where it was, the bed

facing east instead of west, and wonder

if this is a good thing, though there’ve been no more

flames. You think maybe you’ve satisfied

some rite of passage, entered the right password

enabling you to stay these seventeen years

beyond burning. Raspberries greening, apple trees

in tentative blossom.  This is the moment of deep-

seeded hunger. It is the week of planting

carrots, beans and beets, a keenness you know

you’ll cure if the sun persists, if the soil gives

a little more this year.  Digging, you examine

bits of charcoal, whole torsos charred

and feeding the earth. You find you weren’t the first

to burst into blaze, won’t be the last.

Ronda Broatch is the author of Shedding Our Skins (2008) and Some Other Eden (2005).  Her manuscript, Rib of New Fruit, was a 2010 finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award and runner-up for the Cleveland State University Poetry Award.  Broatch is the recipient of a 2007 Artist Trust GAP Grant, and she is currently assistant editor for Crab Creek Review.