To Irene Poem by Nellie Isabelle Steward Cooper

Memory is very good at cropping

Seeing is selective at the first glance
allowing us to notice today as an expanse based
entirely on what we once could see

Yesterday, and tomorrow, we can see
really see, what we thought we saw today

For there is a special kind of dawdle time.

Hearing is different somehow,
permitting you more,
withholding less...

First the grass sang to you

Then the locusts;
then the wind moaned..

Now sounds of desolation can
comfort us, that from the very worst
we remember the very best

That these are the
Litanies of our own despair,

And we give them room to live within us,
because simply knowing one
is itself a kind of love.