The mountain ridges, for one, take the imprint

Of the rains that erode them,

While the trees feed their offspring preferentially

Through reciprocal mushroom networks.

And the elephants—

Oi! The elephants!—

They regale their granddaughters with tales of treasure maps to waterholes

And drunken escapades fueled by the amarula trees.

But what shapes does memory leave

As he traverses the landscape of a single human organism?

He is quite the ephemeral fellow,

Making himself at home,

Curling up with a cup of tea,

So that it seems he had always been there.

In me, he leaves a wild topography,

An ecosystem of high yields.

After all,

I am made up of people.

People and animals and trees.

I collect them wherever I go.

One lives in my hands

When I place seedlings 

A quarter inch

Into the Earth

And dust them gently with soil.

This one is my mother.

One lives in my brows

Quizzically knotted

When trying to unravel

A most impenetrable mystery.

This one is my father.

One lives in the shape of my body

Curled up alongside another

With whom I'd only just been 

In a wrestling match.

This one is my sister.

And on I could go.

It is under the soft blanket of night

During the hour of God

That memory shapes a landscape

That may or may not actually exist.

But he beckons me in all the same

To make visits with those I've collected

And lose track of the boundaries between us,

So it is no longer important to mark,

With pushpins and arrogant certainty, 

Where they are them,

And I am me.