Small High-Country Dam

The case for forgetting seems to be
That it makes for sharper memory.

There aren’t many actions in this world
That save lives without losing any,

And forgetting isn’t one of them.
Babies prune their neurons. Elders fade.

People lose names in mere middle age.
Do these actions have advantages?

They do, sometimes. They also have costs.
The well-loved villanelle of losing

Bishop wrote not long before she died
Lets the reader hold ambiguous

Whether the art of losing means loss,
Accepting loss, or forgetting loss.

Winds whistle around the reservoir,
Which has lost half its water to drought,

Exposing the spot where someone once
Left a body après suicide.

Still, two kayaks paddle out, a hawk
Glides by, and the lowered shoreline bears

No mark of what happened there. There are
Those who believe water retains strange

Mystic memories impressed in it
Of everything that happened in it,

But the water from that day is gone,
And today’s water’s waves won’t wave long.