What the Heart Remembers

What the Heart Remembers

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Greetings, Friends.  Today I would like you to be inspired by the poem "What the Heart Cannot Forget" by Joyce Sutphen.

What the Heart Cannot Forget
By Joyce Sutphen

Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,
cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub
of watery fingers along its edge.

The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,
remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,
gathering itself together for the fall.

The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under
its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down
the sand under the beaks of savage birds.

The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years
of drought, the floods, the way things came
walking slowly towards it long ago.

And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches
where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,
and the arms remember lifting up the child.

The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.

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"Everything remembers something," the poet begins, grounding us in the world -- the world of nature, of things living and non-living, the things of the present and the past.  She adds layer upon layer, detail after detail throughout the poem.  And then she ends with the heart, what the HEART remembers.

I would like you to write a poem taking SOMETHING from Joyce Sutphen's poem above.  You can follow the format and write your own 'remembering' poem if you wish.  Or you can choose another way of writing, but somewhere in your poem try to use either the phrase "The _____ remembers" or "The ___ cannot forget."  I look forward to reading your poems

After you have written your poem, link it using Mr. Linky below.  In the spirit of community, remember to visit the poems of the others who have posted.  You have all week, until Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern when the link will close!