4X2
an online poetry journal
Photo by Melissa Hotchkiss
Penelope
by Darren Morris
I had taken to writing little notes to myself.
I folded them away for later.
I wrote the word open upon them, for it would not
be exactly me who found them.
In case I tried to change and forget what they carried
I began to make them more attractive.
Bejeweled in pictograms, arrows and graffiti, I felt
like god inventing the birds.
So that I would not change too much and forget,
I started folding them into shapes.
Until from a single page, both ship and cargo sailed.
A present that would blossom later
if I remembered who I was and had not forgotten
with every careful instruction.
To pull each corner like a door to a central room
where once your lost lover worked
and for a brief second paused to feel and let you
guess at something terrible but true.
Only to turn and take it up again
and weave her dark hair back into the loom.
Poet's Statement: There is much unraveling and repetition in this piece, both as an act of preservation and as a measure of change. If the memory goes, so goes the concept of self, value, and principle. If the notes inside this poem are poems themselves, then they are also stories of self and identity compromised by time, the only constant, an erasure.
I have been thinking a lot about memory, now that I am going blind too early in my life. I have memories that do not seem to have anchor or relevance. It becomes more essential to remember, but not necessarily the accuracy, only the beauty.
Penelope, as Odysseus' wife, was known as the weaver, and what she wove was a story of identity, loyalty to an idea that was lost.
Bio: Darren Morris' poems have appeared at American Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, New England Review, and Poetry Ireland Review. He works as an instructional designer for an education consortium based in Atlanta and lives in Richmond, Virginia.